Pressure on FIFA president Gianni Infantino is spreading beyond football’s governing bodies. A group of prominent former players has now joined the growing backlash. As a result, they are calling for major changes to the way the global game is run.

In a joint statement, the football legends accused FIFA of drifting away from the values at the heart of the sport. Furthermore, they criticised major decisions being made without meaningful input from players and fans.

Frenchman Mikaël Silvestre, the former Manchester United defender and a member of FIFA’s ‘Players’ Voice’ committee, was the first to publish the statement. It quickly spread across social media and international media. As a result, a group of high-profile former players was added to the growing list of critics of Infantino.

Football legends aren’t holding back

The group includes some of the biggest names in recent football history. Among them are Emmanuel Petit, Juan Sebastián Verón, Robert Pirès, Mikaël Silvestre and Lucy Bronze.

Their message starts with what football gave them: some of the greatest moments of their careers and the pride of representing their countries. However, they stressed that none of this would have been possible without the fans. They described the fans as the true foundation of the game.

Then came the blunt conclusion: “Enough is enough.”

The players argued that silence is no longer an option. This is because football moves further away from the values on which it was built.

The statement does not name Infantino or explicitly demand his resignation. But its criticism of FIFA’s current leadership is unmistakable. The signatories argue that those in power have become unable to separate their own interests from what is best for football.

“Change is essential”

The former players are not simply objecting to individual FIFA policies. They are demanding a different relationship between football’s decision-makers and the people who actually make up the game — on the pitch and in the stands.

They argue that major decisions have too often been made without consulting players or properly listening to supporters. Both groups, they say, need a “genuine, direct and audible” voice in the governance of world football.

The call extends beyond players and fans. Clubs and football governing bodies must also have a role in deciding what comes next, the signatories argue, with major changes needed to rebuild trust.

They ended with an unmistakable warning:

The football community has remained silent for too long… We will no longer remain silent.

Infantino dwindling popularity

The intervention comes at a difficult moment for Infantino. He has faced increasing criticism from within the football establishment over a range of commercial and political issues surrounding FIFA.

The pressure is also building ahead of the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, continental and domestic federations are exploring ways to challenge the FIFA president. UEFA, meanwhile, has increasingly opposed his proposals over the commercial rights to the World Cup.

The former players’ intervention changes the character of that dispute. What was once largely an argument between football’s governing institutions is becoming a wider fight over who gets a say in the game’s future.

Players and fans, the statement makes clear, do not want to simply watch those decisions being made for them.

Statements alone will not remove Infantino from FIFA’s presidency. But if the growing criticism from players, associations and governing bodies begins to converge, it could develop into a much more serious political challenge ahead of the elections.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

Trump pushed to rename the Gulf as soon as he took power in January 2025. CNN reported at the time:

He has also used his power to make changes that were never mentioned on the campaign trail, like renaming the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.” Most Americans, 71%, oppose the name change, according to a recent Marquette University poll.

Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes, straddles the transcontinental border between Canada and the US. Trump even posted a revised map on social media:

Trump posts a graphic showing Lake Ontario renamed as "Lake America" pic.twitter.com/1YaOdH2b6F

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 25, 2026

ABC reported:

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday morning that he is giving “serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” — mirroring his move to rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America early in his second term.

The president also claimed Canadian PM Mark Carney had falsely claimed Trump would interfere with French-Canadians right to speak their language:

I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing. This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective Prime Minister in an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost, from the people of Quebec. I love French Canadians!

French is spoken across Canada, particularly in Quebec, and is an official language in the country. Carney had warned as trade talks collapsed last week that the Trump administration had wanted to make changes to Canada’s use of French.

Carney said:

This was not our choice. We were ready and close to having a comprehensive agreement that would be fair to both countries. But they made changes, including threats on the French language and Quebec culture and Canadian culture. That is not acceptable. That would never be acceptable.

Earlier in 2026, as Trump launched attacks in Latin America and threatened to annex Greenland, there were reports Canada was making plans for a US invasion:

Two Canadian government officials have told reporters that a secret ‘model’ is being developed to fight a guerrilla war — against the US!

The unnamed Canadian officials were quoted in the Globe and Mail — Canada’s leading liberal paper — as saying that its government had:

modelled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response, which includes tactics similar to those employed against Russia and later U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

Trump’s belligerence in the region and globally seems to be accelerating. He has attacked multiple countries and openly threaten allies. In Iran alone, these bully boy tactics have failed. Other countries need to start stepping up and speaking the only language the president understands.

By Joe Glenton

UN members have failed to name the UAE as the driving force behind the Sudan war despite ample evidence. At a long UN security meeting on 24 August, only Sudan’s national government named the Gulf state as the culprit. The rest — including the UAE itself — referred only to ‘external actors’ fueling the war.

Yet the UAE is widely accepted to be arming and supplying the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia which has been linked to various atrocities.

In a three-hour UN Security Council briefing on Sudan, convened to weigh expanding the arms embargo across the entire country, not a single speaker other than the representative from Sudan itself named the United Arab Emirates as the principal party arming the genocidal… https://t.co/GJ5CtZmshS

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 25, 2026

The UK is deeply implicated in the horrors. Drop Site News reported:

The United Kingdom’s representative said fighting was “fueled by armed supplies from within and beyond the region,” naming no one.

In a bizarre twist, the UAE representative also called for an end to external interference, urging an end to:

all forms of foreign support to the belligerent parties, without any exception.

Drop Site New added:

Every weapon that enters the Sudan keeps it away from peace and from the protection of civilians.

Sudan’s grinding war

The three-year war has killed thousands and displaced millions. The RSF, backed by the UAE, is fighting the Sudanese government, with gold interests and regional influence at stake.

Numerous foreign actors, including the UK, have caused the war to fester through active participation and/or outright passivity. Israel, too, is a major player in the war.

The war in Sudan is theoretically between the Arab-majority RSF and the Sudanese government. But foreign states pursuing their own interests are backing the combatants.

Egypt backs the government, alongside Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Israel has backed both sides at different times.

The RSF has killed Sudanese civilians in vast numbers. Some estimates say 150,000 people have died and more than 10 million civilians have been displaced by fighting.

Fighting continued as the UN session took place. Sudan-based reporter @BSonblast reported that both government forces and RSF deployed drones – which have become a major feature of the war – in strikes across the country.

Today's quick update [Aug 24]:

– SAF drone strikes reported in Nyala, South Darfur, targeting RSF positions in the area.

– RSF drone shot down over Kurmuk, Blue Nile State. #KeepEyesOnSudan pic.twitter.com/BpKnHkia5S

— Munchkin (@BSonblast) August 25, 2026

In March the Canary reported that the UK downgraded and sidelined its own atrocity monitoring protocols with regard to Sudan. This helped compound what is now clearly an active genocide. That genocide is largely being carried out by a militia backed by the UK’s Gulf ally and arms trade customer UAE.

One day, somewhere down the line, the UAE-UK relationship will come under closer scrutiny. The Sudanese people remain trapped between competing regional and global forces with few places to turn.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

Following on soon after activists successfully got a Peter Thiel-led conference cancelled at a Wicklow hotel, campaigners have pushed another Irish venue to shut down a genocide-linked event. The Beckett Locke hotel had been set to host ‘Israeli’ cybersecurity firm Check Point Software. However, Dublin-based activists at Your Tech Their Deaths (YTTD) got wind of the event, and pressured the hotel to terminate it.

Like many tech firms in the illegitimate settler-colony, Check Point was founded by former Unit 8200 members. Unit 8200 is one of the most vile elements of the uniquely criminal Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). They are responsible for the Lavender AI system, integral to the holocaust the IOF is still carrying out in Gaza to this day. Lavender produced vast numbers of dubious targets for Zionist war criminals to murder, resulting in countless civilians killed by the lawless land theft project.

Assisting any ‘Israeli’ company is criminal, but helping the likes of Check Point is especially egregious. According to Open Intel, Check Point participates in:

…Israel Innovation Authority R&D grants that carry mandatory revenue royalties tying company IP and revenue to the Israeli state

“We will not stop,” Palestine activists declare

That means, more so than other companies, Check Point funnels money into the Zionist entity’s coffers, allowing it to buy more weapons for its killing sprees, and pay the salaries of IOF terrorists. What else might one expect from a company named after one of the most notorious features of the apartheid entity’s system for brutalising the Palestinians they ceaselessly oppress?

Check Point had initially planned to infest the Gibson Hotel in the Irish capital. Again, the tireless YTTD leapt into action and demanded that people of conscience bombard the phone lines, email accounts and social media of the hotel. The hotel swiftly caved to the pressure, proving how rapidly people power works when mobilised effectively.

YTTD founder Jude Farrell announced that initial success by saying in a video posted to YTTD’s Instagram that there’ll be no funding of ‘Israeli’ genocide in Ireland “while the Irish people have any say in it”. She continued:

We know the Irish government don’t care. We care. We will not give a single euro to the ‘Israeli’ state. Not one euro. And we will not stop. Dialogue has been dropped. National Concert Hall has been dropped. And I’m so proud to say that Checkpoint has now been dropped from the Gibson Hotel in Dublin.

The National Concert Hall was yet another successful example of pressure from below stopping complicity with the apartheid entity of so-called ‘Israel’. The venue dropped a fundraiser for an:

…Israeli ambulance service with a documented record of denying medical care to Palestinians.

Cynical Zionist turd Alan Shatter attempted to use the now-tired conceit that antisemitism was to blame. In reality, Shatter was being antisemitic by conflating the ‘Israeli’ terror regime with Jewish people generally.

O’Driscoll destroyed his golden rep — others are thinking twice

After activists chased them out of the Gibson, Check Point attempted to relocate to the Beckett Locke. They did so via the sort of underhand methods we’ve come to expect from the Zionist entity. Beckett Locke staff told YTTD that Check Point concealed the company’s identity by using a generic Gmail account to book the venue, rather than an official Check Point one. A source with inside info informed YTTD of the booking, however, and they set to work in the same manner as they did versus the Gibson.

They also called a protest for the scheduled day of the event (25 August). When they arrived, staff informed the activists that the hotel had cancelled the event. Staff were apologetic in conversation with Farrell, saying they only became aware of Check Point’s booking when pro-Palestine callers hammered their phone lines to let them know.

Farrell celebrated the win in glorious fashion, yelling via loudhailer outside the Beckett Locke:

Check Point have admitted that this event is cancelled! Fuck ‘Israel’, fuck Zionists, and fuck anybody who helps them!

She continued:

All hotels in Ireland, all conference centres — you are on notice. If you try to hold an event with ‘Israelis’, if you try to hold an event associated with ‘Israeli’ tech, we will shut you down!

Given the numerous successes thus far, this is not an idle threat. Things have clearly shifted since last year, when former Irish rugby international Brian O’Driscoll felt confident he could get away with speaking at a Check Point event.

O’Driscoll was previously one of the most celebrated Irish sportspeople in history, but his reputation is now permanently wrecked due to his willingness to endorse ‘Israeli’ criminals two years into a genocide. It is clear Irish businesses are all now seeing the irreparable damage to their image that stems from association with the genocidal apartheid entity.

Of course, they are being pushed in that direction by relentless pressure from activists, who are setting an example for the world to follow.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

The Black Belt Daily (BBD), an independent media outlet, reported the most recent hanging of a Black father, Demetrius Fleming, on 21 August in North Carolina. An autopsy is currently underway. Fleming’s death is the fourth hanging of a Black person in North Carolina within a year, following three others that were all ruled suicides.

Fleming’s death from hanging was the second hanging in August in North Carolina of a Black man. The first was that of a 32-year-old man from a tree near Nash Square in Downtown Raleigh. It was ruled a suicide.

Within a year, North Carolina has had four hangings, of which three have been ruled suicides, the channel reported.

• Demetrius Fleming — August 2026 (autopsy pending)
• 32-year-old man — August 2026 (ruled a suicide)
• Juliana Nzita — May 2026 (ruled a suicide)
• Cedric Tayhue – June 2026 (ruled a suicide)

Monique from BBD said:

Four Black people have been found hanging within a year. Three out of four of those have been ruled a suicide so far and the police are telling people not to speculate. But when you have four hangings taking place in a state that has had hundreds of documented cases of lynchings, you can’t help but wonder if something deeper is going on.

 

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Police Chief Lawrence Wiggins said  Fleming was already dead when emergency crews arrived on Friday.

He said according to local news:

We’re treating this as an open, equivocal death investigation. The Roanoke Rapids Police Department is committed to finding the facts and reporting them.

This investigation is in its infancy, and it is important to neither make nor perpetuate assumptions as facts. The evidence will provide the conclusion; anything else will create more confusion.

Lack of mainstream coverage

The channel has created a map showing hanging deaths of more than forty Black people in the US since 2018, amid a notable lack of mainstream coverage of these deaths.

 

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America’s history of lynching Black people

Local news site from North Carolina, the News & Observer, said last week:

Hanging deaths involving Black people have persisted in the past 20 years across the South — according to a study from civil rights group JULIAN tracking cases between 2000 and 2025 — often reigniting fears they will go uninvestigated

They also quoted civil rights organization A. Philip Randolph Institute, saying:

“When a Black person is found hanging from a tree in the American South, authorities cannot reasonably expect the Black community to hear the word ‘suicide’ and stop asking questions. Not with this history. And certainly not now.”

Axios Raleigh said that more than 120 lynchings between 1877 and 1950 have been documented in North Carolina, per the Equal Justice Initiative.

In a state with over 120 documented lynchings, four hangings in one year raise questions that routine rulings cannot answer.

As Ani Says of the Canary asks:

How long are we going to keep ignoring this?

 

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Featured image via the Black Belt Daily / the Canary

By The Canary

The US has killed two people in a so-called ‘narco’ boat strike, bringing the total since September to 223. These strikes follow reports alleging that the CIA and/or its contractors attacked three vessels near the Galapagos in March and January 2026.

The US military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) posted a section of a video showing the strike on X:

"This operation is a clear and decisive reminder that SOUTHCOM is taking the fight directly to the cartels."

On August 23, under #SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan’s direction, Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel… pic.twitter.com/aIw1qn36gd

— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) August 24, 2026

This was the first strike for some time. in response to these developments, New York Times reported that:

Southern Command did not explain the two-month lull in strikes since an attack on a boat in the Caribbean killed eight people on June 21. Military officials have attributed the pause at least in part to planes and other equipment being diverted to help victims of the recent earthquake in Venezuela.

On 3 January, after an intense military build up in the region, US Special Forces kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. At-sea strikes began in September 2025 but continued after the Caracas raid and are ongoing.

The Trump regime has made clear it wants to exert fuller control of the Americas, building close alliances with right-wing dictators in Latin America, threatening Cuba, Canada and Greenland.

US Homeland Empire

As the Canary has repeatedly reported, Trump has merged the War on Terror process, the War on Drugs, and far-right ideology:

The new right-wing narratives of illegal migration and drug trafficking have merged with the climate of militarism, ‘counter-terrorism’ and colonial policing forged during the War on Terror. Trump has been able to tie these together to wage a war against the exploited, the racialised and the desperate.

The US president has conflated:

immigrants, drugs and free trade as sources of weakness coming from outside, “poisoning the blood of our country”.

This is a return to:

the archaic geopolitics of a settler empire to the modern legal frameworks devised by his liberal predecessors.

International legal NGO Just Security noted:

As shared on social media and accompanied by video, U.S. SOUTHCOM announced a strike, conducted by Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, on a vessel with “active involvement in narco-trafficking” in the eastern Pacific, killing two. The strike was executed at the direction of SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan.

Adding:

This is the first publicly announced strike on a vessel under the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere.
Unlike most recent SOUTHCOM posts announcing strikes against vessels suspected of trafficking narcotics, this announcement did not state that the vessel was “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations.”

The US is currently locked into a failed war with Iran. When that war ends Trump’s sights will return fully to the Americas. And the losers, as ever, will likely be the people of the region.

Featured image via the US Southern Command / Canary 

By Joe Glenton

An Israeli military strike targeting a nearby building has destroyed a warehouse storing nutrition supplies intended for children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers in Gaza.

The strike happened overnight (24-25 August) in Deir Al Balah, central Gaza. The force of the explosion caused large sections of the building to collapse, including the roof and walls, completely burying supplies beneath the rubble.

The warehouse belongs to Ard El Insan (AEI), a local humanitarian organisation. It works in partnership with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) to provide nutritional support to women and children.

The warehouse contained nutritional supplements and supplies intended for malnourished children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers who are supported by around 60 medical points run by AEI and MAP.

The medical points support up to 100 women and children each day. AEI’s team confirmed that the explosion damaged the entire stock, rendering it unsuitable for human consumption.

Sahar Salem, AEI’s project coordinator, said:

Losing these quantities in their entirety is a major blow to our work and will undoubtedly affect our ability to reach the children and women who need these services, particularly given the conditions they continue to face in the aftermath of starvation.

Since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, our work has never been easy. Two of our colleagues were killed and another was injured by Israeli military strikes. Every attack and interruption happens at a time when people are in desperate need of the services we provide.

Even with the ceasefire, conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging, and children and women still urgently need continued support. All we hope for is for conditions to become safer so that we can continue our work and reach those who need us. These children and women cannot wait.

Rowida Al-Sabbah, MAP’s nutrition programme lead, said:

When we talk about a warehouse being destroyed, we are not simply talking about a building or quantities of supplies being lost. We are talking about a service being disrupted, about nutritional supplements that were supposed to reach a child, a pregnant woman or a breastfeeding mother who relies on that support.

This is happening at a time when rates of malnutrition remain high, including among children aged five to 10, a group for whom we have seen increasing needs in recent months.

Unfortunately, in Gaza, even the simplest things we need to provide nutrition services are now vulnerable to being lost or disrupted.

Despite all these challenges, we remain determined to do everything we can to continue supporting children and mothers in these areas and to ensure that they do not lose access to a service they urgently need, particularly those who are most at risk.

Humanitarian workers, humanitarian facilities and the supplies that people depend on must be protected.

AEI’s team is currently assessing how to use supplies from other warehouses to ensure services can continue to serve those in need.

Malnutrition rampant in Gaza

The loss of these supplies comes at a time when nutritional needs in Gaza remain severe. A new UNICEF report this week has shown there are concerning rates of maternal and chronic malnutrition in Gaza and that humanitarian aid is vital to prevent further deterioration of people’s conditions.

More than 12% of children in Gaza have been assessed to be suffering from stunting and more than half of pregnant women suffer from severe anaemia driven by acute food insecurity and lack of basic nutrition.

Despite the so-called “ceasefire” agreement, Israeli military attacks in Gaza and forced displacement orders continue to intensify. Israel has killed more than 1,296 Palestinians since October 2025, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

In June 2026, the Independent UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israeli forces and authorities have continued to commit genocide, particularly through the targeting of Palestinian children.

MAP is calling for urgent action to ensure the ceasefire endures and becomes permanent. And it wants civilians protected in line with international humanitarian law.

Governments, including the UK, must maintain meaningful pressure on Israel to bring a permanent end to Israel’s genocide. This should include halting arms transfers and ensuring accountability for violations of international law.

Featured image supplied

By The Canary

The Deauville Sports Images Festival has removed the work of a Palestinian photographer from Gaza; succumbing to pressure from the Israel lobby. The silencing of the people of Gaza continues unabated, it seems.

The truth must “offend”

The image they removed captures a football match in Gaza against the backdrop of the city’s apocalyptic cratered urban environment. Crumpled buildings and a haze of dust and smoke set the scene, contrasted against an astroturfed green football pitch. The photo was replaced by one showing European cycling.

The organisers hid behind the excuse of wanting to avoid “controversy or offend[ing] anyone”. They wouldn’t name those behind the pressure campaign.

Killing off Gaza

The image showed a February 2026 match between Gaza Sports Club and Egyptian team Al-Ahly. Israel has murdered around a thousand Palestinian sportspeople during the genocide since October 2023, including almost 600 footballers.

What is offensive is not showing the image and the reality behind it, particularly in a festival that boasts it offers different perspectives on sport.

Featured image via Jehad Alshrafi

By Skwawkbox

A Welsh disability group has rejected a direct invitation from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to help “co-host” a workshop in Bangor, North Wales. It’s part of the controversial government Timms Review into the PIP disability benefit.

DWP doorstaff

In a statement (see below) Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru (DPAC Cymru) explained that the invitation amounted to “a request for glorified doorstaff.”

DWP documents, which the Canary has seen, reveal that selected workshop co-hosts would be excluded from “deciding or designing workshop content” or “facilitating discussions during workshops” as these were “out of scope.”

Instead, the responsibilities on the day would be to “provide additional staff” to “welcome participants to the venue and help them settle in”, “set the scene” at the start, and “thank participants at the end.”

A DPAC Cymru spokesperson said:

The Timms review has repeatedly failed us as disabled people, and as Welsh people. It is not the ‘co-production’ that was promised to parliament. What’s needed is an independent review, democratically led by disabled people and our organisations including our trade unions.

We are not boycotting the review. We want to take part and put our views on the record, even as we protest outside. But we will not be there to smile and take people’s coats.

DPAC’s call for an independent review was recently backed by the Welsh Government, which said that the:

level of co-production has fallen well short of what disabled people in Wales have a right to expect.

DPAC Cymru Statement

On Friday [21 August], the Timms Review Steering Group wrote to Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru (DPAC Cymru), inviting us to “co-host” one of the upcoming ‘shaping recommendations’ workshops looking at changes to the PIP disability benefit.

This put us in a difficult position. DPAC Cymru has consistently fought against the failings of the Timms Review. We have been clear that the review has repeatedly failed us as disabled people, and as Welsh people. We are clear that it is not the ‘co-production’ that was promised by Sir Stephen Timms to parliament last year – which even review co-chair Dr Clenton Farquharson acknowledges.

We did not want our name used to legitimise a review that was entirely unfit for purpose. But we also did not want to miss an opportunity to make it better.

Most importantly, we have consistently argued that we need an independent review, democratically led by disabled people and our organisations including our trade unions, that invites the views of non-disabled carers, volunteers, and workers in health, social care, housing, transport, education, and welfare.

Being ‘appointed’ by the DWP as co-hosts would take us no nearer to the independent review we need.

However, the briefing attached to the document made the decision easier for us. It explained what the DWP meant by “co-hosting.”

It said plainly that we would not be “deciding or designing workshop content” or “facilitating discussions during workshops” as these were “out of scope.”

Instead, this would be done by Public Sector Consultants (PSC) facilitators and a West-England disabled people’s organisation.

We would also “not be part of the workshop participants in an organisational capacity” and would “not be expected to provide feedback on recommendations.” In other words, we would have even less input as co-hosts than as attendees.

Instead, our role on the day would be to “welcome participants to the venue and help them settle in”, “set the scene” at the start, and “thank participants at the end”, for which we would be paid £37.50 per hour.

What the Timms Review have described as an invitation to “co-host” a workshop, is instead a request for glorified doorstaff.

We are not boycotting the review. We responded to the Call for Evidence. Our members want to attend the workshops and have our say on the record. We also intend to simultaneously protest outside the workshops, as we did in high-profile protests last year during the sham Pathways to Work consultation.

But we will not be there to smile and take people’s coats.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

On 24 August, the Labour Party announced the allocation of nearly £10bn in government funding to build social housing and affordable homes across England over the next decade. It adds to the £6bn already assigned to similar developments in London.

The areas set to receive a share are predominantly Northern, consisting of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, North East England, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and the West Midlands.

It represents the first stage of a £39bn programme to build some 300,000 new affordable houses. £16bn of the remainder is earmarked specifically for construction outside of the capital.

But there’s a catch. Burnham previously said that he thought the full £39bn should go to social renting. However, today’s announcement stated that just 60% of the £10bn will do so.

Burnham: ‘I would devote all of it to social housing’

Three months ago in May, then-Manchester mayor appeared on the Social Housing Podcast to give his take on the £39bn proposal. At the time, he said that:

I would actually devote all of it to social housing.

However, according to yesterday’s announcement, 60% of the £10bn would go to social renting. That is, properties managed by social landlords which people can apply to rent at around half the normal price, provided they meet certain requirements.

Meanwhile, the remaining 40% will go to other forms of affordable housing, e.g., sheltered accommodation and shared ownership schemes.

Appearing on BBC Breakfast, Matthew Pennycook — Labour housing minister – tried to spin this as Burnham taking a “pragmatic approach”. In fact, today’s decision would help “get money out the door”. Pennycook then claimed that a greater portion of the next block of funding would go to council housing.

Now, eagle-eyed readers may already have noticed a bit of linguistic slippage here. That is, council housing is a form of social renting. But, for the most part, the funding in yesterday’s announcement won’t go to the councils themselves.

Instead, the BBC reported that:

It is understood ministers decided against giving councils more of the funding announced in the first tranche because they did not believe councils would be in a position to build the required number of social homes.

More specifically, the government will divvy to £10bn between 33 ‘strategic partners’ to build over the course of the decade. Of those 33, the Guardian reported that three will be local councils.

Rayner didn’t get the memo

Housing secretary Angela Rayner, however, apparently didn’t get the memo about Pennycook trying to smooth over Burnham backtracking on social rent/council housing/other ‘affordable housing’. Instead, she waxed lyrical on the fact that local councils were being included at all:

Growing up on a council estate and raising children as a young working mum, I know firsthand that access to a secure, affordable home can be a lifeline for families up and down the country.

Add to that how Guardian readers would:

know just how important council housing is too. You will know it’s so much more than just a roof over your head – it gives working parents a safe place to raise their family, offers kids the stability needed to thrive in school and wraps a community around those who need it most. […]

This once-in-a-generation investment will help rewrite these stories, delivering the genuinely affordable homes our country needs, getting people off waiting lists and helping families put down roots so they can get on in life.

You know what though? This is a good thing. When Burnham first became PM, he pledged to fight what he called the “insidious briefing culture” of the Labour Party. And my God does it look like he’s delivered on that promise… I’m not sure that anyone was briefed on Labour’s social housing line in the slightest.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

At approximately 5am on 24 August, a group of activists from People Against Genocide (PAG) scaled the roof of the Martin-Baker factory at Lower Rd, Denham, Uxbridge. After occupying the roof, and shutting down the factory, they poured red paint and began damaging the factory.

Martin-Baker specialises in aircraft ejection seats. It manufactures them for the Israeli Air Force’s T-6 training fleet, as well as F-35 fighter jets. Without these ejection seats, F-35 fighter jets couldn’t operate over Gaza.

It has continued to export these components to the IAF despite supposed restrictions on arms sales to the Israeli military. The Labour government announced the restrictions nearly 2 years ago, on 2 September 2024.

A November 2024 report by Declassified and Irish news site The Ditch highlighted cargo documents showing how Martin-Baker sent deliveries to an Elbit Systems factory in Karmiel, a city built on expropriated Palestinian land in the early 1960’s.

Elbit Systems, which also has factories in the UK, is the Israeli military’s biggest weapons supplier, and has the contract for maintaining the IAF T-6 training fleet. Elbit supplies 85% of the Israeli military’s killer drone fleet, and 80% of their land-based equipment.

A spokesperson for People Against Genocide said:

Weapons companies like Martin-Baker are openly providing necessary components for Israeli fighter jets to be able to operate over the skies of Gaza, to commit genocide against the Palestinian people.

Despite Andy Burnham saying Labour “got it wrong” on Gaza, he has done nothing to stop Britain’s role in the ongoing massacres of Palestinians.

That’s why it is up to ordinary people against genocide to do it ourselves, by taking direct action to prevent the export of the components needed to commit war crimes and enable the ongoing colonisation of Palestine.

Martin-Baker launders its image by claiming its ejection seats “save lives”. However, without these seats, Israel’s bombing would come to an immediate halt, as they can’t operate their deadly fighter jets without them.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians would not have been murdered, and the ongoing genocide would stop immediately. They do not save lives, they enable the mass murder of people in Palestine, Lebanon and across West Asia.

Featured image supplied

By The Canary

On 23 August, academic Priyamvada Gopal who specialises in postcolonial studies (including race and Empire), posted the below, earning the following community note:

If you believe in the existence biological racial differences, you are a racist.

Hope that clears it up.

— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) August 23, 2026

Gopal has since disputed the validity of the community note. Self-described ‘race realists’, meanwhile, have freaked out over the initial comment. So what’s going on here?

Race

There are no doubt many who have no idea what Gopal is talking about nor what the community note is supposedly disputing. What it comes down to is the meaning of ‘race’.

The concept of ‘race’ is only applied to one species on this planet, and that’s human beings. The reason for this is that there’s no meaningful definition of ‘race’ (as opposed to terms like ‘species’ and ‘genus’). As the BBC reported in 2025:

When scientists unveiled the first draft of the Human Genome Project 25 years ago, it seemed to deliver the final word on some antiquated myths about race. It provided definitive evidence that racial groupings have no biological basis. In fact, there is more genetic variation within racial groups than between them. Race, it showed, is a social construct.

To clarify further, when we think of someone belonging to a ‘race’, we’re making assumptions based on skin colour and facial features. The thing is, skin colour and facial features don’t tell us anything about people besides what they look like. White skin is no indicator of fitness; black skin is no indicator of intelligence, and an eye with epicanthal folds is no indication of empathy. In other words, the signifiers of race don’t tell us anything interesting about biology, which is why race is not used as a biological distinction.

History

So – why is any of this important?

It’s important because there are those who claim that races are biologically distinct, and there are all manner of assumptions you can make about people based on their skin colour. These ‘race realists’ or ‘race scientists’ generally want to convince you that certain races are inferior – usually intellectually – and that other races are superior.

Ironically, these racial supremacists often look like this:

‘Race realist’ who launched Jason Arday hate campaign smears vigil

Explaining the origins of race science, the BBC note it was the Carl Linnaeus — the “father of modern biology” — who came up with the term. Linnaeus also created the terms ‘genus’ and ‘species’ which are still used today, and apply to all living beings. Linnaeus’s races included the following:

• Asiaticus – people with “yellow skin”, and straight black hair.
• Americanus – indigenous Americans, with “red skin” also with straight black hair.
• Africanus – “black skinned” people with tight curls in their hair.
• Europeaus – “white skinned” with blue eyes.

As the BBC added:

Even if this colour scheme were true, Linnaeus’ original descriptions only began with physical traits. What he included in later editions of Systemae Naturae, which became the basis for scientific racism, were portrayals of behaviours. Asiaticus were described as “haughty, greedy and ruled by opinions” while Americanus were labelled “stubborn, zealous, regulated by customs”. Africanus women were denoted as being “without shame” while both sexes were said to be “crafty, lazy, and governed by caprice”. He described Europaeus as “gentle, acute, inventive, governed by laws”.

By any definition in any age, these assertions are racist and entirely incorrect.

Retrograde

Giving you an idea of how the concept of biological race doesn’t hold up, this is one of the replies to Gopal:

The 100 fastest 10,000m runners were born here: https://t.co/S4lqcnuYU0 pic.twitter.com/n35k8efYML

— Adam Hibbert (@adhib) August 24, 2026

If race was a consistent indicator of other biological traits, the 100 fastest 10,000m runners would be evenly spread across the entire African continent – not tied to one corner of it. There are also several reasons why successful 10,000m runners come from the same region of Kenya — chief among them that the area is 8,000 feet above sea level, and high altitude training is ideal for long distance runners.

No one is arguing that it’s impossible for biological differences to manifest in distinct populations over time. This is why certain physical differences exist between ethnic groups after all. What scientists are saying is that these physical differences are no indicator of intelligence, fitness, or personality. And the people who claim otherwise are — as Gopal says — are the very definition of racist.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

Right now, the UK is perfectly positioned to end the never-ending nightmare that is privatised water. Many of these obviously corrupt companies are up to their eyeballs in debt; at the same time, their failure to maintain the water network has never been more apparent. In other words, we could renationalise these indebted companies – like Thames Water – with pretty much total public support. The problem is servile worm Andy Burnham would rather kowtow to the Yank vulture capitalists:

So the great champion of public ownership doesn’t even have the facilities to nationalise Thames Water while it pumps billions of litres of shit into our rivers.

Turns out Andy Burnham’s politics are just vibes after all.

Absolutely pathetic. https://t.co/WgsfsRGSNR

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) August 24, 2026

Pathetic

Britain is one of few countries in the world to have a fully privatised water network, and the only one in Europe. The reason for this is because privatising water was always an obvious disaster waiting to happen, and most countries didn’t have a leader as societally suicidal as Margaret Thatcher.

While all of the water companies are a travesty, Thames Water is the sewage load that floated to the top. And as we reported in July 2026:

The company, which has a debt pile of nearly £20bn, is on the brink of collapse. Since June 2025, Thames Water’s creditors, a group of US hedge funds, have been negotiating with Ofwat to formally take over the utility.

As part of the proposed deal, the creditors want to waive fines until 2030. And they want to suspend or ‘significantly modify’ pollution and performance targets. The creditors also want to raise bills for households beyond the level currently set by Ofwat.

A We Own It said at the time, Britain’s choices were to:

line the pockets of US hedge funds with our money. Or, they can put households and the environment first.

Clearly, Burnham is choosing the former.

SAR for Thames Water (or not)

As the Times’ Steven Swinford reported, Burnham indicated that he planned to put Thames Water in a ‘special administration regime’ (SAR). The company would have existed as a SAR until the government could find a buyer. In other words, Burnham only ever intended to temporarily nationalise the failed company. We’d say Burnham is literally the embodiment of ineffectual half-measures, but now he’s backtracked on temporary nationalisation, we can’t even claim that.

Swinford added:

However, The Times has been told that officials have raised concerns about the risk to taxpayers and the potential for legal challenges. The officials are also concerned about the “practical barriers” to putting Thames Water into administration in the first place

The government is now conducting further work to establish if there is a “viable option” for putting the company into administration, but it is likely to take several months. Ministers have not ruled out doing so but it is looking increasingly challenging

Water companies like Thames Water have racked up colossal debts by paying money to shareholders instead of maintaining their networks. The idea that these companies have a legal leg to stand on is ridiculous. And if they do, there should be a criminal investigation into whoever drafted these contracts.

The British public never consented to our water being used to enrich these greedy Yank swine.

It was bad enough in decades past; it’s a national emergency now that we’re facing record-breaking droughts.

British farmers say they’re reaching crisis point — and next year’s food production could be at risk

The worst drought in 50 years has hammered crops, with the NFU estimating a £370 million hit to wheat production

READ MORE: https://t.co/2VrZpFVLAK pic.twitter.com/6mpVA4oZQM

— FarmingUK (@FarmingUK) August 22, 2026

Bills to pay

Swinford added:

The emergency SAR — the first for a water company — would risk leaving the taxpayer with a bill for the £2 billion that Thames Water believes it needs to keep running until the end of next year unless an alternative solution can be found quickly. There are further concerns about how easy it would be to find a buyer for the ailing company after it is taken into administration

The problems detailed above are the problems of favouring temporary nationalisation over permanent. If we were to run our own water network – as all other European countries do – we could charge citizens a fair amount for their water while investing profits back into the network. It sounds revolutionary, but it’s literally what 90% of countries do.

As We Own It have said today:

If Burnham doesn’t take Thames Water into public ownership, he’ll go down in history as a same-old prime minister delivering sewage in our rivers and spiralling bills to households. This is his one and only chance, if he doesn’t take it he’ll be a laughing stock.

The idea that we can’t take back this company which has literally gone bust, been in breach of its licence for two years and has put forward several proposals for illegal sewage is a joke. It makes a mockery of households, of our entire water system, of the special administration regime, of England. Why should a handful of US creditors – whose own water is 87% publicly owned – cow a British Prime Minister into submission? Why can’t he stand up for us like the Blair government did when Railtrack went bust?

Officials should absolutely be investigating how to reward this failure as little as possible but let’s be clear – the shareholders don’t need compensation, they have already walked away. The creditors are expecting a huge haircut to the debt. So that means just refinancing a vastly reduced debt more cheaply in the public sector. The company can be brought into special administration on two counts – it’s insolvent and it’s failing to fulfil its statutory duties.

Andy Burnham went to court to fight for bus passengers in Manchester. He must continue defending the public interest if he wants to stay popular. The alternative is to rubber stamp the rip off of English households for decades to come. Because there has never been a cheaper or better time to take back Thames Water.

Costs mounting with Thames Water

Make no mistake; failure to permanently nationalise water is going to cost us a lot more than £2bn in the long run. These reckless businesses are going to fail again and again, and when they go under, they’ll dump their debt and disappear into the wind.

Featured image via Jeff Overs / Toby Melville 

By Willem Moore

Beau Greaves returned to the PDC Women’s Series on Sunday 22 August and immediately re‑established her dominance. Producing back‑to‑back title wins to move within touching distance of her 60th crown on the circuit. After missing Saturday’s action, the Doncaster star arrived at the Matiolli Arena, Leicester with trademark precision. Bringing control and scoring power, collecting her 58th and 59th Women’s Series titles in a single afternoon.

Greaves, now firmly established as the standout force in the women’s game, wasted no time in setting the tone. Her morning campaign began with three consecutive whitewash victories, sweeping aside Jane Hawtin, Sue Lowther and Vicky Pruim without dropping a leg. The early rounds showcased the same ruthless efficiency that has defined her rise, with her scoring consistency and finishing accuracy immediately separating her from the field.

Fightback sparks title charge

Her run towards the Event 19 title was almost halted in the last‑16, where Gemma Hayter pushed her to the brink. Beau Greaves trailed 3‑2 and faced elimination, but the 22‑year‑old responded with the composure that has become her trademark. She reeled off the final legs to turn the match around and book her place in the quarter‑finals, keeping her hopes of a 58th title alive.

From there, she accelerated. Greaves overpowered Aileen de Graaf 5‑1 in the quarter‑finals, producing an average north of 96 and controlling the match from the opening visit. She then dispatched Kirsty Hutchinson 5‑2 in the semi‑finals, maintaining a steady scoring rhythm and leaving little room for resistance.

That set up a repeat of the 2025 Women’s World Matchplay semi‑final, as Greaves faced Lisa Ashton in the Event 19 final. Greaves’ afternoon campaign began in identical fashion. She opened Event 20 with back‑to‑back 4‑0 wins over Leanne Halls and Felicia Bay, once again asserting her authority with clean finishing and relentless scoring. The Doncaster star dropped just three legs across the entire event, underlining the gulf between her and the chasing pack.

Her momentum continued with consecutive 4‑1 victories over Louise Pearson and Rhian O’Sullivan. Both matches in which she controlled the pace and punished every loose visit. She then swept past Angela Kirkwood 5‑0 in the quarter‑finals, producing another display of near‑flawless consistency to reach the final four.

Whitewash seals title number 59

The final brought a rematch with Aileen de Graaf, but the Dutch player struggled to find her rhythm. Beau Greaves capitalised instantly, controlling every leg and producing an average above 91 to complete a 5‑0 whitewash. The victory secured her 59th Women’s Series title and capped a flawless Sunday in which she reasserted her position as the circuit’s dominant force.

Greaves’ ability to maintain high averages across multiple matches, combined with her finishing accuracy and tactical control, continues to set her apart. Her Sunday double not only strengthened her position at the top of the Women’s Series rankings but also moved her within one title of the landmark 60‑title milestone.

Beau Greaves remains firmly on top of the Women’s Series rankings, with Lisa Ashton and Fallon Sherrock occupying second and third place respectively. Gemma Hayter sits just behind them in fourth, currently holding the final qualification spot for the 2026/27 World Darts Championship.

The top three players from the final PDC Women’s Series rankings will qualify for the 2026/27 Paddy Power World Darts Championship, with the top‑ranked player also earning a place at the 2026 Mr Vegas Grand Slam of Darts. Greaves’ Sunday surge has strengthened her grip on both positions, and her form suggests she is well on course to secure both berths.

Beau Greaves: closing in on history

With 59 Women’s Series titles now to her name, Beau Greaves stands on the brink of another milestone. Her return on Sunday was a reminder of her ability to dominate fields with a blend of scoring power, finishing precision and tactical control. The Doncaster star continues to set the standard in the women’s game, and her march towards title number 60 looks increasingly inevitable.

Greaves’ Sunday double was not just a return. It was a statement. After missing Saturday’s action, she re‑entered the circuit with complete authority, sweeping through both events and reaffirming her status as the standout force in women’s darts. With major tournaments approaching and her form showing no sign of slowing, Greaves’ pursuit of further silverware looks set to continue.

Featured image courtesy of BBC Sports

By Faz Ali

Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo continues to write a new chapter in his exceptional career, having come closer than ever before to reaching the 1,000-goal mark in his professional career – a feat that would be the first of its kind in modern football.

Ronaldo, aged 41, has taken his tally to 977 goals in 1,333 matches, having scored in Al-Nassr’s 4–0 victory over Al-Riyadh in the second round of the Saudi Professional League, leaving him just 23 goals away from joining the 1,000-goal club.

23 goals and a mission that seems achievable

Despite his advancing age, Ronaldo continues to maintain scoring rates that keep him in contention for a feat that seems out of reach for most players. So far in 2026, the Portugal captain has scored 20 goals in 30 matches, including 17 for Al-Nassr and three for his national team.

Ronaldo needs to maintain a rate of nearly one goal per match in the coming period to reach this historic milestone before the end of the year. Calculations suggest he has at least 29 official matches available until December, which gives him ample opportunity to realise this millennium dream, provided he maintains his scoring rate and avoids injury.

The task seems all the more achievable given his figures from last year, when he scored 41 goals in 46 matches at an average of around 0.89 goals per match – a rate close to what is required of him in the coming period.

Al-Nassr and Portugal: the road to 1,000

Al-Nassr bears the brunt of Ronaldo’s hopes of reaching this historic milestone, as numerous matches await him in the Saudi Pro League, alongside his participation in the AFC Champions League and the King’s Cup.

As Al-Nassr continue to compete in continental competitions, Ronaldo will have more matches and minutes on the pitch to boost his tally, particularly as he is relied upon as one of the team’s key attacking players.

As for the Portuguese national team, Ronaldo remains a key part of the manager’s plans, with the team continuing to rely on him as their main captain. Upcoming international fixtures offer him a further opportunity to edge closer to the 1,000-goal mark, given his clear desire to continue playing at the highest possible level.

A race against time towards an immortal milestone for Ronaldo

The irony is that Ronaldo is not merely chasing a personal milestone, but is striving for an achievement that could become one of the most difficult milestones in the history of football. Reaching 1,000 official goals requires a long career and exceptional consistency, which makes Ronaldo’s reaching this milestone a historic event that transcends the boundaries of clubs and national teams.

Between his current tally of 977 goals and the anticipated 1,000, the gap seems short in mathematical terms, but it represents a major challenge for a 41-year-old player. Nevertheless, Ronaldo has repeatedly proven that he is capable of defying the effects of age; so the question now is not whether he will reach 1,000, but when he will celebrate his 1,000th goal?

If “El Don” maintains his current scoring rate, the coming weeks could see him rapidly closing in on a figure that would crown an exceptional career spanning more than two decades, cementing his place among the most influential goal scorers in the history of the game.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

The president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), Slovenian Aleksander Čeferin, issued a direct warning to the President of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), the Swiss Gianni Infantino, stating that the latter may face a challenger in the FIFA presidential election scheduled for March 2027, amid mounting pressure on him due to his disputes with a number of continental federations.

In excerpts from an interview with the British podcast The Rest Is Politics: Leading, Čeferin confirmed that he would not be that rival, but clearly hinted that Infantino’s continued participation in the race might not be guaranteed without the emergence of a candidate capable of challenging him.

Infantino faces two options

Čeferin said that Infantino faces two options: the first is to realise that he no longer enjoys sufficient support, not only at the political level from the federations with voting rights, but also within the football community and amongst fans, players and coaches.

The second option, according to the UEFA president, is for Infantino to stand in the elections next March; however, he predicted that in this scenario a rival candidate would emerge, adding that he does not yet know the identity of this candidate.

Čeferin’s comments come at a time when Infantino is facing mounting pressure over the row concerning his commercial plan to sell shares in World Cup rights to private-sector investors – a plan that has been temporarily shelved.

A growing opposition front

The dispute has turned into an institutional confrontation after UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF accused Infantino of “deception”, whilst UEFA has escalated its stance by threatening to boycott certain FIFA competitions.

Infantino, who has been FIFA president since 2016, had until recently appeared to be on a clear path to winning a new term unopposed, but mounting opposition to the plan to sell stakes in World Cup rights has brought the election race back into the spotlight.

FIFA has set 18 November 2026 as the deadline for submitting candidacies for the presidency of the international federation, ahead of the elections scheduled for March 2027 in Morocco.

Čeferin closes the door on a challenge

Although his name has been put forward as a potential challenger to Infantino, Čeferin, aged 58, has confirmed that he does not intend to enter the race, insisting on continuing to lead UEFA.

He said he had two reasons for not standing: firstly, he enjoys working at UEFA and wishes to continue doing so; and secondly, his lack of interest in the post gives him, in his view, greater credibility when criticising FIFA’s direction.

Čeferin thus leaves the door open to an electoral scenario that could be the most exciting since Infantino became FIFA president, as the emergence of a strong rival would transform the upcoming elections from a virtually foregone conclusion into a genuine battle for the leadership of world football.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

Author – and former UK ambassador – Craig Murray put forward a plan in late July 2026 to make Scotland independent of its blighted southern neighbour. Without the Scottish independence referendum that London’s controlling government continues to refuse it. And it seems many Scots like the plan – and so, it seems, does much of the international community.

Simply bold over Scottish independence

Murray’s plan is straightforward and provocative:

1) Set a Date for Independence

The First Minister should write to the Prime Minister informing him that a referendum is preferred, but if there is no prior referendum then he will invite the Scottish Parliament to declare Independence on a specified date (I suggest 14 September 2029).

State that an Independent Scotland will then hold a confirmatory plebiscite in February 2030.

2) Canvass the International Community and Tee Up a UN General Assembly Vote

Independence is not primarily a matter of domestic law. It is existence as a state recognised by other international states. What actually makes you a state is not any domestic act, but recognition by other states, expressed formally through recognition by the UN General Assembly and obtaining a seat at the United Nations.

As part of a team from Liberation Scotland and Salvo, I have been lobbying diplomatic missions of the UN to this end for 18 months now. We have found enormous support for Scottish Independence and literally no outright hostility. What we have repeatedly met is astonishment that the Scottish government and/or the governing party the SNP, has made no effort to carry the case to the international community.

Murray then proposes that Holyrood write to the UK PM simply informing them that Scotland will declare its independence in September 2029 and seek recognition as such from the UN General Assembly. This move will affirming the Scottish statehood and sovereignty that gives it the right to do so, with the democratic mandate of Scotland’s elected government. As Murray states:

A supposed voluntary union can by definition be dissolved. The self-determination of peoples is an inalienable Charter right.

Prepared to stand for Scotland

Scots cannot assume the English regime will simply acknowledge what’s right. They will have to be prepared to secure their borders and resist attempts to break Scottish independence. As Murray points out:

This is where Catalonia failed. Its referendum was disrupted by brutality to which it had no answer. Scots must be prepared to stand for Scotland.

This stand will be more than physical resistance. It will require the setting up, or repurposing for independence, of a central bank and other key institutions. But it will also require the “peaceful and friendly” blockading of military and other installations that might try to bring down the re-established state.

Murray points out that this will put Andy Burnham under sudden pressure to agree independence that he clearly has no interest in dealing with if the pressure is not brought to bear. And he points out that the UK government doesn’t have a leg to stand on, given its own declarations about other nations’ independence:

These quotes are from the British government’s intervention before the International Court of Justice in the Kosovo hearings:

“In most cases of secession, of course, the predecessor State’s law will not have been complied with: that is true almost as a matter of definition.”

And the still stronger formulation:

“Nor is compliance with the law of the predecessor State a condition for the declaration of independence to be recognised by third States, if other conditions for recognition are fulfilled. The conditions do not include compliance with the internal legal requirements of the predecessor State.”

Popular support

It seems many Scots agree. A recent poll found that almost half of Scots back Scotland taking back its independence – without a referendum and whether Westminster likes it or not:

With half or more of residents backing Scottish independence generally, the Westminster government is not going to grant another referendum – just as it continues to refuse its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement to hold a referendum on Irish reunification as soon as there is a realistic prospect of a ‘yes’ vote, which there already is.

That means taking back independence is the only realistic route for the millions of Scots who see Westminster become ever more a failed state collaborating in genocide and illegal war – and waging war on its own citizens’ rights and speech to protect the criminals.

Read Murray’s full article here.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Reform UK has published its new policy for affordable housing in the UK – and it’s somehow even more racist than we’ve come to expect. It victimises homeless people, disabled people and settled migrants, all in the name of elevating a reactionary vision of young, working, British families popping out British babies.

Invoking social housing’s origins with ministers David Lloyd George and Nye Bevan in the policy document’s foreword, deputy Reform leader Richard Tice claimed that the scheme was conceived:

not as a subsidy for immigrants or those who choose not to work. Quite the opposite. It gave working Britain access to the secure housing needed to get on, close to their workplace, with space to raise a family. Allocation wasn’t based solely on need at a single point in time, but on suitability. Being given a council house was seen as a privilege, creating a generation of hard-working, houseproud Brits.

God, they really like getting a war reference in there to justify saying something abhorrent, don’t they?

Tice is also conveniently skipping over the fact that in 1950, immediately after Bevan’s reforms, the employment rate was around 70.4%. It peaked again in ’56, at 74.8%… which is still lower than today’s 75%. People work – they just can’t afford houses. And, of course, those who can’t work still need somewhere to live (but we’ll get to that).

‘Being in work will be a requirement’ says Reform

The rest of Reform’s scheme isn’t exactly an improvement on Tice’s foreword. The policy document goes on to state that:

Reform UK will back British workers. Being in work will be a requirement to access new social housing built under this scheme. Social housing should not be a reward for claiming welfare.

You may be forgiven for thinking ‘even Reform must make an exception for disabled people – surely those who can’t work need social housing more than anyone?’ Well, you’d be wrong, wouldn’t you.

The document doesn’t mention disability a single time. It includes no carve-outs for people who can’t work. Instead, it plans to prioritise under-35s, “veterans, those in work and married couples” – which, as the Canary wrote yesterday, is pure conformist bullshit.

The current system (ostensibly) prioritises people who need social housing by dint of homelessness, disability, or living in a dangerous situation. That’s the system Reform want to do away with.

Please, oh please blame the foreigners

The document goes on to state that:

Reform UK will end access to social housing for foreign nationals, evicting them after a short grace period.

A Reform UK government will deliver an additional 50,000 new affordable homes per year.

These commitments will make available around 1 million homes for British families.

First and foremost, the ‘foreigners are taking your homes’ rhetoric is on full display here. Along with being nakedly racist and xenophobic, it’s also a bunch of bloody rubbish.

Just 11.5% of main householders in social housing are non-UK or non-Irish nationals. Migrants on work / student visas, illegal migrants and asylum seekers aren’t even eligible to apply.

Reform itself admits that the Housing Act 1996 already prevents foreign nationals from accessing social housing. The exceptions are for people with EU Settled Status or Indefinite Leave to Remain, i.e. people who have already been welcomed to stay in the UK indefinitely. Reform wants to renege on that deal.

As such, Labour accused Reform of going after:

long-term UK residents that have contributed to our country but are not British citizens, including NHS staff.

Return of the magic money tree from Reform

So, next question – how does Reform plan to fund this ridiculous scheme? Well, the policy doc has that (half-) covered too:

This will require £10 billion a year of investment, which will be fiscally neutral and require no new taxes or government borrowing.

It will be funded through a combination of the British Sovereign Wealth Fund, housing associations in partnership with institutional capital and a renewed Right to Buy Scheme.

It later adds that “reforming the planning system” and scrapping Net Zero will contribute to that £10bn, which is:

based on £200 per square foot and an average unit of 1,000 square feet. That figure will be lower given the overregulation of the sector (making this a conservative estimate).

So, to clarify, Reform is planning to build more houses by cutting corners and lowering the standards it needs to meet. We hope all those married, under-35, working veterans the party loves so much enjoy their crumbling, damp-ridden death traps.

Also, if you’ve never heard of a ‘British Sovereign Wealth Fund’, don’t worry – it’s because it doesn’t exist. Rather, it’s the name Reform gives to its plan to consolidate around 100 council pension schemes into a single £500bn pot.

A Reform government would then require this pot to direct 25% of its investments to UK companies and products. How exactly it plans to turn a profit from social housing is anyone’s guess. Wave goodbye to your council pensions if Reform get in, folks.

‘Changing the order of the queue’

As ever, there’s far more nonsense to wade through in Reform’s plan, but we’d be here all day at that rate. Fortunately, homelessness charity Shelter cut straight to the heart of the matter. It stated that the way to solve social housing was to build more houses, but Reform is focused on “changing the order of the queue”.

The charity’s chief executive, Sarah Elliott, fleshed out that criticism. She said Reform’s policy put “nationality and employment ahead of housing need”. This, in turn, would leave:

even more families trapped in awful temporary accommodation for years on end. Not to mention putting those escaping domestic abuse and violence at serious risk of harm.

Elliott added that the scheme would increase levels of homelessness in the UK, and was clearly designed to “stoke division”.

We at the Canary couldn’t have put it better ourselves. This policy, if you would call it that, is nothing more that barely-disguised racist, regressive fantasy – shoddy British houses for married British couples making little British babies, and sod the settled migrants, disabled people and homeless people.

As ever, it’s exactly what you’d expect from far-right Reform UK.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

It’s been reported that Reform UK councillor Jason Mark Townend was arrested following a pub brawl involving several men and women. The police have subsequently released Townend without charge, although he remains on police bail.

Reform UK confirms councillor arrested after pub incidenthttps://t.co/DlwXgqdSr9

— Reform UK Exposed (@reformexposed) August 24, 2026

Incident that led to Reform councillor arrest

Townend is a councillor in the Wibsey and Odsal ward of Bradford Council. Townend is one of three Reform councillors in the ward, with his party being the largest in Bradford Council, which is currently under no overall control.

The party’s Bradford leader Stephen Place has previously attracted criticism for social media posts such as the following:

As we reported at the time:

The above post highlights three posts Place shared.

The first suggests ‘London has Fallen’ as a result of embracing Islam; the second depicts Angela Rayner as a sex worker who charges “£1 for 30 minutes”; the third we’ve blurred because it’s an AI creep shot of what appears to be teenage girls.

Brawl

Regarding Townend, a statement from West Yorkshire Police confirmed the following details:

Police were called to a pub on Manchester Road, Bradford at about 10.30pm on Saturday 22 August to a report of ongoing fighting involving several men and women.

Officers attended the scene at which a woman in her 40s had sustained facial injuries.

Following enquiries, a man, aged 57, was arrested on suspicion of affray and a woman, aged 26, was arrested on suspicion of section 18 assault.

Both have been released on police bail pending continuing investigations.

A Reform UK Bradford spokesperson has said:

We are aware that Councillor Townend was arrested on Saturday night in Wibsey.

He was subsequently released without charges.

As the police made clear, however, investigations are ongoing, and Townend is on police bail.

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT

As Skwawkbox reported yesterday, 24 August 2026, the Israeli occupation has issued a kill order for its military to slaughter children if they dare to fly kites in Gaza. The pastime has been one of the few outlets for children to express being children in the midst of Israel’s genocide. It hasn’t taken long for the murderous colony to murder its first child for the ‘crime’.

Israel kills its first kite-flying child

Within hours of the kill order, Israel’s occupation forces slaughtered four-year-old Hassan Al-Qatraoui and other members of his family, bombing their home and claiming he had flown a kite:

 

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Invader vehicles also murdered at least one child in an attack on refugee tents in Khan Younis. 10-year-old Amal Nashat Abu Khater was eating with her family in their tent when she was hit in the back by IOF bullets fired at the tents.

The silence of the UK and other collaborator governments to Israel’s ongoing mass murder of children and families is unforgivable.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

In April this year, the much-heralded motion to the Green Party conference, which promised to turn it into the first mainstream political party openly committed to anti-Zionism, appeared in the conference order of business. But in the end, to the frustration of very probably an absolute majority of delegates, the motion was not put to conference.

Zionism is Racism

Instead, a series of bureaucratic manoeuvres, from attempts to rule the motion out of order to a protracted filibustering campaign, ensured that the Greens remain a Zionist party in terms of their official policy on Palestine – the two-state solution.

Although a vote on the motion had been expected early in proceedings following a successful push by its backers to fast-track the process, it was repeatedly delayed by several no-confidence motions against the party chair, each of which required a separate debate, the Telegraph reported.

A lengthy fight over the policy itself led to additional delays, after opponents of the measure tried unsuccessfully to rule it as out of order, by arguing that it contradicted the Green Party’s existing policy, which calls for a two-state solution.

But who were the people running this evident campaign to filibuster the motion out of the conference?

Step forward the Jewish Greens.

Jewish Greens

It was formed in 2018 as a “Liberation Group” inside the Green Party at the height of the Labour Party antisemitism witch-hunt. Among the highlights of the programme of speakers and events held by the Jewish Greens in 2024 were:

• New Israel Fund event: “An Evening with Mikhael Manekin in conversation with Alona Ferber”. The New Israel Fund is a Zionist funding organisation dedicated to supporting projects normalising Zionism and undermining resistance to it.
• Yachad event: “In conversation with Ami Ayalon” (with Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian). In 2008, Dutch prosecution authorities failed to arrest Ayalon, a former head of the Zionist intelligence agency Shin Bet, while he was visiting the Netherlands. An application for his arrest was reportedly “submitted to the Dutch authorities by Khalid al-Shami, who alleged that he was a victim of torture from1999-2000, when Ami Ayalon was the director of the Shin Bet.”

Both these events were advertised on the Jewish Greens ‘Events’ page. After this author posted about them on X in June 2024, accompanied by screengrabs (here and here), the two entries mysteriously disappeared from their website, while other events before and after in 2024 remained and are still available to view.

In February 2026 the Jewish Greens produced a long statement calling for a vote against the Zionism is Racism motion. It talked of how the motion might “alienate Jewish members and make it harder to combat racism,” though, obviously, the motion was specifically targeting the racism that is inherent to Zionism.

Who are they?

The key people in the Jewish Greens include the following current office bearers and two co-founders. It’s important to state that none of them have publicly dissented from the collective position paper of the group on the motion before conference, just cited.

Vivien Lichtenstein, co-founder of the Jewish Greens in 2018, Chair of the group 2018-2021 and then re-elected in 2023. She has publicly stated that the Green Party is a welcoming space for Zionists. She has claimed that:

if there’s any racism in our Jewish communities, then it is our responsibility to deal with that.

Naturally, however, she appears not to see the racism that takes the form of Zionism in the community. Approached by the Canary for comment, Lichtenstein said that “I describe myself as both Zionist and anti-Zionist depending on how Zionism is defined.” Pressed to explain that statement, Lichtenstein wrote a second response saying:

I’m unable to spend the time today providing an answer to your request for those definitions, leading me to describe myself as anti-Zionist or Zionist. There were some meetings when I would have described myself as both Zionist and anti-Zionist depending on how Zionism is defined, but not in any public statement to my recollection.

Opposing positions over anti-Zionism

Jo Bird was an officer of Jewish Greens from 2022 until July 2025, latterly she was Treasurer. She only joined the Greens in 2022 after being unjustly expelled from the Labour Party. She was a prominent Corbyn supporter and involved with JVL which in September 2025 formally defined itself as anti-Zionist, and changed its name to Jewish Voice for Liberation.

It is puzzling therefore that she reportedly opposed the motion, saying it:

should not be discussed so that mediation and further consideration could take place and a new unifying motion be put forward in the autumn.

In response to a request for comment from the Canary, Jo Bird said “I’m not a Zionist”.

Sam Alston is the Secretary of the group, re-elected in 2025. He has been a youth worker at Liberal Judaism, a staff member of Yachad, a representative on the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and co-founder of Na’amod, the former two of which are Zionist and the latter of which refuses to take a position on Zionism. His profile on the Jewish Greens webpage used to say (as recently as 28 March 2026) that he was a “council member for the Zionist Federation”, but this has now been removed.

‘Not racism’

Josh Alston, is Policy Officer of Jewish Greens, was previously Chair of the group and is the younger brother of Sam. He is the only key member profiled here who describes himself as a “committed anti-Zionist”. He defines this position as the belief that “Zionism is a form of settler nationalism” and that “the racism, genocide and apartheid characterizing Israel today have their core in Zionism as an ideology”.

This is preparation for his absurd position that:

While I would agree that Zionism is intrinsically racist, it is not a type of racism.

Thus he opposed the anti-Zionism motion. If we take his prevarications as given in good faith, it’s difficult to imagine a more confused position. He concludes that “as a Jewish person”, Zionists “are my friends and family and people that I love.” He would do well to heed the sentiments of the famous 1984 song by the Special AKA entitled “Racist friend”. Be it your cousin or your uncle or your lover…

Andrée Frieze was re-elected as a non-portfolio officer of the group. Frieze is married to a former member of the Zionist occupation forces. Though a convert to Judaism, she has taken naturally to Zionist talking points and tactics.

Other members involved against the anti-Zionism motion

As the Canary has previously reported Frieze was behind what appears to have been a bad faith complaint against Hamza Egal, chair of Global Majority Greens and convenor of the Greens’ racism policy working group. Egal later wrote an open letter denouncing what he said was racism in the Green Party, saying there was a pattern of:

repeated use of accusations of antisemitism — deployed not only against me but against many members of this party who oppose Zionism and its racist ideology and practice.

More recently, on her Substack Frieze denounced the Zionism is racism motion as “antisemitic”. One of the reasons for this, she says, is that “it will make it impossible for any Jewish member of the [Green Party] to express anything resembling support for Israel.”

As if that would be a bad thing!

Elise Benjamin is a co-founder of the Jewish Greens. Benjamin was a key actor in the illegitimate anti-Zionism filibuster operation. She is director of the national committee of UK Friends of Standing Together Greens. This is a Zionist normalisation organisation as has been pointed out by Lubna Speitan, the author of the ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion and even by the BDS movement.

On her X profile Benjamin claims to be an “indigenous Judean”. Given that she is an Ashkenazi Jew, this is an obvious falsehood. She nevertheless plays the victim in the mainstream press, telling the Guardian: “I’ve had experiences where someone has been telling me where my family are from.” Helpfully enough, Benjamin maintains an online family tree on ancestry.co.uk with her partner Craig Simmons – also a key Jewish Greens activist. This shows that their older relatives and ancestors, back eight generations, hailed originally from Poland in the mid Eighteenth Century and then variously from Latvia, Russia, Ukraine and Germany. As is well known, none of these places are in the Levant.

Zionist synagogues in the pipeline to defend Zionism

Some of the core Jewish Greens members are associated with the Kingston Liberal Synagogue. As the name would indicate it was a member of Liberal Judaism until 2025 when it joined with the Movement for Reform Judaism to form the Movement for Progressive Judaism.

All three organisations and all member synagogues are formally signed up to the Zionist movement. Andrée Frieze is a member and her husband Shimon Morad (the “Israeli” former member of the Occupation Forces) is a trustee of the charity that runs the synagogue.

The Alston brothers, Sam and Josh were brought up in this synagogue, and their mother Sara is also a trustee. The brothers are now also connected to liberal (Zionist) synagogues in Leeds and Oxford. Both brothers have been associated as leaders/workers with the Liberal Judaism youth movement LJY-Netzer, which says it aims to “promote a progressive Zionist vision of Israel”.

Weaponising “antisemitism” in the Green Party

Since the conference there has been a concerted effort by the Zionist press and their allies to ‘do a Corbyn’ on Zack Polanski. Polanski, though we might be critical of his positions, has at least been more combative than Corbyn was.

But it appears that something over 30 Green Party members have been (mostly) suspended or expelled for having violated Party rules on antisemitism.

The Daily Mail reported that:

the Greens are investigating more than 30 council candidates for alleged anti-Semitism.

In addition there have been expulsions of ordinary members who were not candidates. Among the comments made which resulted in them being suspended, expelled or dropped as candidates were statements about false flag operations, comparisons of “Israel” to the Nazis, “conspiracy theories” about 9/11, collaboration of Jews/Zionists with the Nazis. One candidate was denounced by the Jewish News for statements “rooted” in “antisemitic tropes” which they hilariously reported as being:

the conspiracy theory that Starmer and other Labour MPs have been ‘bought’ by Labour Friends of Israel, a mainstream cross-party lobbying group.

None of these statements exhibits even prejudice against “Jews as Jews”, far less racism. And of course the veteran anti-Zionism proponent Tony Greenstein was suspended on totally trumped-up charges, as the Canary has reported, which weaponised the lawfare carried out against him by genocidal Zionist groups. Later, in July, he was expelled.

Chaos in the Green Party

How is the Green Party getting it so wrong?

Where did the conduct rules being used to suspend or expel come from?

Well, it appears they were written and guided through party structures by the Jewish Greens, who published them over 17 pages on their own site. They also helpfully published a four-page summary guide effectively to expelling principled anti-Zionists.

At no point in the four pages does it say that anti-Zionism is not synonymous with “antisemitism” or that anti-Zionist views may be protected under the Equality Act, as established in my own case in 2024 and confirmed at appeal recently.

The guidelines were first produced in 2020 in presumed anticipation of just such a moment. The people who put them together, according to Zack Polanski himself, were Vivien Lichtenstein, Elise Benjamin and Josh & Sam Alston, the key figures in the Jewish Greens, of which Polanski was, at that time, the Treasurer.

He promoted the guidance in a piece on the Bright Green website in October 2020. The guidance is a cooked-up Zionist recipe for a witch-hunt, including as it does, both the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and the Jerusalem Declaration. The latter is of course a liberal Zionist panacea attempting to be slightly more reasonable than the IHRA, but still prohibiting totally legitimate criticism of Zionism as racism, as has been shown by Phil Bevin.

We’ve seen it all before around anti-Zionism

The Jewish Greens have also been offering antisemitism awareness training to the party. In a process reminiscent of the Jewish Labour Movement campaign of harassment and intimidation in the Corbyn-led Labour Party, they say they have so far trained a number of branches, as well as the Executive of the party and its youth section. It is no wonder, therefore, that these apparently mysterious expulsions are happening.

The Canary approached the following members of the Jewish Greens for comment via email, or by Facebook Messenger or by message on X: Vivien Lichtenstein, Jo Bird, Sam Alston, Josh Alston, Andrée Frieze and Elise Benjamin. Replies were received from Vivien Lichtenstein and Jo Bird, which are reflected in the article above.

Featured image via the Canary

By David Miller

On 20 August, hundreds of ACORN members across England and Wales took action to highlight the cost of living crisis. They were taking the fight directly to the companies which profit from unaffordability.

ACORN is a renters union which takes action to protect people from eviction and campaigns against the causes of unaffordable housing.

ACORN action

With protests, picket lines and occupations at nine HQs of water and energy giants, bailiff companies and corporate landlords, they sent a clear message:

We won’t stand for it any more.

In Yorkshire, dozens of ACORN members blocked the entrance to Yorkshire Water. Executives agreed to meet after hearing stories from customers who have suffered due to their policies. Meanwhile, in the North West, it was the turn of United Utilities.

Members took a kayak to Severn Trent Water’s HQ in the Midlands and secured an agreement to:

• Not implement price surges.
• Meet with ACORN within two weeks.
• Give the union input into Severn Trent’s cost of living policies.

In Wales, members occupied the offices of Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, which also led to an agreement to further negotiations.

In Bristol, members held a noisy occupation of the lobby at the offices of OVO Energy. They refused to leave until heads had agreed to meet. Brighton members meanwhile went to Octopus Energy.

In the North East, members turned the tables on bailiffs by placing a wheel clamp on a CDER Group van. Meanwhile in Norfolk they secured a meeting to discuss the council’s use of bailiffs after a council-run bailiff firm, ARP, was the subject of a noisy protest.

Usman Akhtar, national spokesperson for ACORN, said:

Working class people across the UK are being battered by the cost of living crisis, working to exhaustion and waking up dreading the landlord raising the rent again, their energy bill rising, water bills spiralling and bailiffs leeching off whatever joy is left.

All while fat cat CEOs gorge themselves on massive bonuses at our expense, we’ve had members being chased for bills that aren’t theirs, members left with £300 water bills for one single month and others left with no running water at all. We’re battered and bruised but not beaten.

Our day of action is about rising up and fighting the cost of living crisis at the front doors of the those causing it and taking back what’s ours.

We’re demanding rent caps, an end to the use of bailiffs for debt collection, no executive bonuses, no price rises above inflation for 5 years, a write-off of household utility debts built up during the cost of living crisis.

Bills are rising but so are we!

Featured image via ACORN

By The Canary

Australia needed a statement after their defeat in the first Test. They delivered one with ruthless clarity, hammering Bangladesh by an innings inside two days to square the series. A performance built on pace, discipline and a refusal to let the hosts breathe turned the contest into a short, sharp demolition, restoring order after Bangladesh’s historic win in the opener.

Bowlers rip through Bangladesh on day one

Bangladesh’s decision to bat first lasted only a few chaotic hours. Australia’s attack, sharper and more controlled than in the opening Test, hit their lengths immediately. Mitchell Starc set the tone with early swing, Josh Hazlewood locked down the top order with relentless accuracy, and Pat Cummins applied pressure from the other end. The hosts never settled.

Wickets fell in clusters. Edges carried, stumps were rattled, and Bangladesh’s attempts to counter were brief. Marnus Labuschagne’s sharp catch in the cordon removed one of the few batters who looked capable of resisting. By lunch, Bangladesh were already deep in trouble; by mid‑afternoon, they were gone for a total that gave Australia complete control.

The collapse was stark. No partnership built any meaningful resistance, and Australia’s bowlers barely needed to adjust plans. Cummins’ short spells were decisive, Hazlewood’s discipline suffocated scoring, and Starc’s late swing cleaned up the tail. Bangladesh walked off knowing they had handed Australia the initiative.

Australia’s batters pile on decisive lead

With the ball having done its job, Australia’s batters approached their reply with clarity. Usman Khawaja anchored the innings with calm control, leaving well, punishing anything loose and ensuring Bangladesh’s bowlers were forced to work. His innings wasn’t flashy, but it was exactly what the situation demanded.

At the other end, Steven Smith played with typical precision, rotating strike and picking gaps. Their partnership steadied Australia and pushed the lead into commanding territory. Labuschagne added further weight with a busy contribution, keeping the tempo high without taking risks.

Bangladesh’s bowlers searched for movement but found little. The pitch, already worn from the opening day’s collapse, offered uneven bounce but not enough to trouble Australia’s top order. When wickets did fall, they came from moments of individual error rather than sustained pressure.

Australia’s middle order extended the advantage. Travis Head played positively, threading boundaries through the off side, while Alex Carey added important runs to stretch the lead beyond Bangladesh’s reach. By the time Australia declared, the margin was already decisive. Bangladesh faced a mountain.

Second‑innings collapse seals two‑day finish

Bangladesh needed resilience, time at the crease and a willingness to absorb pressure. Instead, Australia’s bowlers produced an even more ruthless display than on day one. Hazlewood struck early, removing the opener with a ball that straightened just enough. Starc followed with a delivery that tailed late and clipped the top of off stump. The tone was set.

Cummins’ spells were short, sharp and hostile. He targeted the stumps, forced batters onto the back foot and created constant uncertainty. Edges flew, lbws were reviewed, and Bangladesh’s innings unravelled quickly. The middle order, already under strain, couldn’t halt the slide. A brief partnership offered hope, but Starc returned to break it with a full ball that swung late.

Australia’s catching was crisp. Labuschagne and Smith were busy in the cordon, and Carey’s work behind the stumps was clean. Every half‑chance was taken, every loose shot punished. Bangladesh’s batters, who had shown composure in the first Test, looked rattled by the relentlessness.

The tail folded swiftly. Hazlewood trapped one lbw with a ball that nipped back, Cummins cleaned up another with a delivery that stayed low, and Starc finished the job with pace too hot to handle. Bangladesh were dismissed well short of making Australia bat again, confirming the innings victory and the two‑day finish.

Series levelled, momentum restored for Australia

Australia’s response to the opening‑Test defeat was emphatic. Their bowlers rediscovered rhythm, their batters applied pressure with control, and their fielding tightened. The innings win inside two days wasn’t just a result; it was a statement of intent.

Bangladesh, buoyed by their historic first‑Test triumph, were brought back to earth. Their batting lacked the composure and patience that had defined their earlier success, and their bowlers couldn’t contain Australia’s top order. The challenge now is to regroup quickly.

For Australia, the victory restores balance and confidence. Starc, Hazlewood and Cummins operated as a unit, Khawaja and Smith provided stability, and the team’s overall discipline returned. The series, once tilting towards Bangladesh, is now level with everything to play for.

Focus shifts to decisive final test

With the series tied, the final Test looms large. Australia will enter with momentum, clarity and renewed belief. Bangladesh must rediscover the resilience that carried them through the opener. Conditions will matter, selection will matter, and temperament will matter even more.

Australia’s challenge is to maintain the intensity shown here. Bangladesh’s challenge is to respond with the same conviction they displayed in the first Test. After two contrasting matches, the finale promises a compelling finish.

Featured image courtesy of Cric Info

By Faz Ali

Analysis by news monitoring site Newscord has exposed the cynical pile-on by UK ‘mainstream’ media that drove Black academic Jason Arday to his death – and the equally cynical way the media lost interest after killing him.

Arday died after being hounded by the media following accusations of plagiarism by white-supremacist ‘racial scientist’ Nathan Cofnas. Cofnas believes Black people are innately less intelligent than whites, especially Jews. He has been suspended by Ghent University after the Canary exposed a dossier by Ghent academics detailing his unfitness for his role there.

When you suggest to a member of the British press that maybe the excessive coverage given to Jason Arday was racially motivated. https://t.co/v5xtiYyNEz pic.twitter.com/Kht0XYpMLb

— Plutôt la Barbie (@plutotlabarbie) August 24, 2026

Nine-day windows across coverage of Arday

As Newscord notes, the analysis:

compares two nine-day windows across the same fifteen outlets: his last nine full days alive against the nine days after the news broke, outlet by outlet, byline by byline, regulator by regulator, and headline register by headline register.

Its findings are not shocking – the racism-driven feeding frenzy and the sudden loss of interest that followed it are appalling. But nobody who pays attention to UK media and the political landscape in which it operates will be shocked, or even surprised. This includes the near-silence of many of the ‘MSM’ hacks, who had eagerly joined the lynch-mob, after Arday was found dead on 14 August:

The data show how spread across the ‘mainstream’ spectrum the mob-mentality was – and how interest among most of the same outlets ebbed by comparison after Arday died. This no doubt reflects the sudden hands-in-pocket, whistling-and-kicking-stones, ‘nothing to see here’ attempts by the perpetrators to distance themselves from the scene of the crime:

Sham ‘regulator’

IPSO is the “sham” regulator set up by corporate papers after the phone-hacking scandal to allow them to ‘regulate’ themselves – or, in simpler language, to mark their own homework and avoid actual, Leveson-compliant regulation. Unsurprisingly, Newscord found that IPSO publications were the worst offenders in the pile-on – and dumped Arday the fastest after his death.

But on a par with them was the Guardian. The self-regulating paper was down in the slime with the worst of them:

And the Guardian was up alongside the right-wing rags in terms of individual journalists filing stories about Arday: two out of the worst five.

When Arday died, the tone of the articles flipped suddenly as the hacks tried to distance themselves from responsibility for his death. And they lost interest precipitously. While Arday’s loved ones and friends had to continue to come to terms with his loss, the papers published only ten articles across all publications in the final third of the nine-day period.

Self-justification

Newscord also notes that, of the paltry ten articles in the last three days, one was the Guardian’s attempt to exonerate itself. In a statement titled “What this page says about the Guardian, and what it does not”, the analysis states that:

The [Guardian’s] statement condemns as false the claim that the Guardian’s coverage was driven by a personal conflict with Professor Arday. This page has never made that claim and does not make it now. It says nothing about why any journalist wrote anything, and nothing about the cause of his death, which is with the coroner.

What it does report about the Guardian is arithmetic anyone can check: 17 articles in his last nine full days alive, 10 in the nine days after the news broke, and no external press regulator to ask about either. Every one of those articles is listed with its URL in the table below.

On the harassment the statement describes, our position is plain. Abuse of individual journalists is wrong, racialised abuse most of all, and nothing on this page is an invitation to it. Our argument is with what newsrooms chose to publish, which is a matter of public record, and never with the people who work in them.

One disclosure, because this page counts what outlets publish. The statement is itself one of the Guardian’s 10 items in the after window. It is a press office statement rather than newsroom copy, which leaves 9 newsroom items, and the register layer classifies it as justifying the media.

The Canary was the first publication to reveal that the Guardian had been warned that its hounding of Arday was putting him in danger. His warning – including relating Arday’s own words that a Guardian journalist was driven by ill-feeling after an earlier row – was ignored. When the Canary published the emails, the Guardian sent legal threats demanding a retraction.

The Canary refused to be intimidated and stood by its reporting.

Read the full analysis here.

By Skwawkbox

On Thursday 13 August, Nigel Farage successfully beat Count Binface in the Clacton by-election. As Count Binface is a novelty character, Farage didn’t have much to celebrate here. Despite this, he threw a mini-festival that evening dubbed ‘Farage Fest’. Now, said festival is under investigation from the local council after it emerged the organisers had been refused a licence:

Reform UK’s ‘Farage Fest’ went ahead without permission from council https://t.co/pR2t84Bvw9

— Reform UK Exposed (@reformexposed) August 25, 2026

Farage Fest

The council in question was Tendring District. According to them, they refused to grant the organisers a Late Temporary Event Notice (LTEN) because the application wasn’t made in time. You can apply for an LTEN as late as five working days before such an event, and yet Reform still missed this deadline.

According to Lisa Hastings (Tendring’s corporate director for law and governance):

No authorisation was granted under a LTEN for the event.

And as reported by the BBC:

Reform’s statement said: “Reform UK are confident that no rules were broken and the event was conducted in accordance with the law.”

The party said it had been an invite-only private event and no activity had taken place which required authorisation under the Licensing Act 2003.

It added that a LTEN had been submitted on a precautionary basis, but no reliance had been placed on it, as the party said it had not been necessary.

So, in Reform’s version of events, Farage Fest didn’t think they needed the LTEN, but they applied anyway in case they did. This suggests they weren’t confident about what they did or didn’t need. And the fact that they applied for it late further shows they didn’t understand the rules.

If Reform has broken the law, the event’s organisers could face a fine at best and a custodial sentence at worst. Given that this was an event celebrating Farage’s victory over a novelty bin-themed alien, it would be a pretty embarrassing thing to do time over.

Cover

Speaking to the crowd at Farage Fest, the Reform leader said:

Welcome to Clactonbury. I’m going to be here all night.

The speculation about Farage Fest is that it only existed so the Reform leader could avoid attending the election count – a count which would have been Farage himself and a few dozen novelty characters. People think this because Farage himself said the following on election night:

"I am damned if I am going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory… and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies," Nigel Farage says

With votes still to be counted he claims victory, but says he won't attend the Clacton declaration

Live: https://t.co/hDmX1IgUxU pic.twitter.com/UJc3eYdVT2

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) August 14, 2026

Interestingly, some predicted Farage Fest could run into trouble. Academic Anton Mittens said earlier this month:

Update Farage-Fest licencing: Three tings are possible, one the event had a Temporary Events Notice (TEN) which is limited to fewer than 500 people (including staff) at any one time. Two it was a larger events that would require a full (or time-limited) premises licence. Or three, they didn’t have a licence.

As of 16 August 2026, no confirmed licence application is publicly visible on the Tendring council website. An FOI request is pending with Tendring District Council’s Licensing Section, which should provide a definitive answer.

Tendring District Council’s target for issuing a full (or time-limited) premises licence is 2 months of receipt of a full/complete application. For a TEN it’s 10 working days. Either-way Farage-Fest was weeks possibly months in the planning.

The free provision of alcohol avoids the alcohol-licensing requirement, but it does not automatically exempt the event from needing a licence if other licensable activities took place. Especially given there was a £25 ticket price.

Reform wouldn’t operate outside the law would they?

So it was the third possibility, they didn't have a licence after all. Should have known, Reform and their people don't care about the law. Stand-by for the 'I've done nothing wrong' statement from Farage, and that it was someone else who was responsible for arranging the event.… https://t.co/vRw0HOYA0a

— The Rev. Anton Mittens (@MittensOff) August 24, 2026

Predictable

At this point, it would be weirder if the Farage Fest was done by the book. This party seems to be incapable of doing anything without making an absolute mess of things.

For the party’s diehard supporters, of course, none of this matters. They’re voting Farage because he’s promising to attack refugees and other minority groups; not because he’s on top of his planning permissions. Each new scandal is making it harder for the party to win majority support, though, and this is increasingly apparent in Reform’s polling.

Featured image via Bradley Thompson / Reuters

By Willem Moore

On 24 August, southern France experienced a powerful supercell thunderstorm. This resulted in a significant number of lightning strikes; it also saw a tornado touching down in the village of Verzeille, France:

South of France today

An incredible tornado near Carcassonne this afternoon, developing beneath a powerful supercell.

This is a reminder that severe thunderstorms in Europe can produce some seriously violent weather. pic.twitter.com/ZJnilrScMb

— UK Weather Updates (@UKWX_) August 24, 2026

Supercell, tornado in France

Supercells are the least common of all thunderstorms, and they’re known for being intense and dangerous. These storms are characterised by a rotating updraft, leading to the circular motion that can be seen in the below video. At the point when the video was filmed, the storm was producing pretty much constant lightning:

SÚPERCELDA DE TORMENTA EN FRANCIA

Impresionante estructura en arco, tormenta en rotación, sobre el sur de Francia
Con dirección probable a Marsella, atención a lluvias intensas, granizo y fuertes ráfagas de viento.
Créditos : @NathAlie
Vía @VigipreventionM pic.twitter.com/iUB2jNHhrk

— Geól. Sergio Almazán (@chematierra) August 24, 2026

In America, supercell storms are most common in the central states, which is where ‘tornado alley’ is. Reporting on the tornado which hit France, MyRadar Weather wrote:

touched down near/northwest of Limoux and moved east toward the city. It was associated with a rotating supercell thunderstorm that formed ahead of a messier storm complex/clusters. It propagated eastward, likely gobbling up extra low-level spin north of the Pyrenees Mountains.

It was very likely a significant (EF2+) tornado, and may have caused EF3 damage. Winds probably exceeded 150 mph (240 km/h). Complete destruction of some homes has occurred.

Videos captured the tornado from multiple angles:

America? Tornado alley?

Nope! This tornado footage is from southern France ahead of severe thunderstorms.

Other parts of France have seen severe thunderstorms causing structural damage to buildings. pic.twitter.com/5ShsqGhTVS

— Met4Cast – UK Weather (@Met4CastUK) August 24, 2026

Here’s another angle of the tornado that developed in France today.

Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/1LEgo06Rtc

— Met4Cast – UK Weather (@Met4CastUK) August 24, 2026

While tornados aren’t unheard of in Europe, this one does follow a run of record-breaking heatwaves. It’s understood extreme temperatures and weather events will become more common due to climate change. In other words, images like the above might lack any sort of novelty factor in years to come.

France wasn’t the only European nation being battered by lightning either:

Lightning Blitz in Europe
179,000 Bolts today. Crazy!
It’s not coincidence. The #Mediterranean is record hot. So when fronts move in, that collision of heat and energy is explosive! #Europe #Spain #France #Italy pic.twitter.com/8gqdX5DWrE

— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) August 24, 2026

BREAKING!
ABSOLUTE CHAOS IN FRANCE! IT LOOKS LIKE ZEUS HAS LANDED!
Wild severe weather is hitting France! OVER 30,000 LIGHTNING STRIKES have been recorded in just the LAST 2 HOURS across the Mediterranean coast and inland areas!
Trapped hot and humid air masses… pic.twitter.com/6LAspxGfgu

— Jeo Albant (@jeoalbant) August 24, 2026

Other videos showed the aftermath of the storm:

Bizar voor woorden! Of deze beelden ergens uit Tornado Alley zijn gemaakt, maar niks is minder waar.

Dit is de schade die de tornado kort geleden heeft achtergelaten in Pomas, Frankrijk.

Beelden via InfosFrancaises#tornado#onweer pic.twitter.com/ntyOxxq3gk

— Art of Thunders Stormchasers (@Art_of_thunders) August 24, 2026

The Mediterranean lifestyle

France wasn’t the only nation to face extreme weather; Spain also experienced violent storms. This led to criticism of the UK journalists and politicians who recently told Britons to shut up and enjoy the nice weather:

‘Britain should shut up about global warming and adapt to the Mediterranean lifestyle’ latest. https://t.co/FaJLO5vMbK

— Brendan May (@bmay) August 24, 2026

Richard Tice of Reform UK is perhaps the worst example of this, and he’s still going:

"Why would we not celebrate things that are going well?" – @TiceRichard

The deputy leader of Reform UK says he doesn't regret his comments about heatwaves this summer and the English wine industry. pic.twitter.com/Vz1yPdVHZn

— Ridge & Frost (@RidgeandFrost) August 24, 2026

As we reported, the heatwaves we experienced this summer led to:

• Extreme and abundant wildfires (including one which burned down houses in Stourbridge).
• Suspected train derailments caused by tracks buckling.
• Ongoing crop failures which will drive food inflation.
• Water shortages.

When you “celebrate” the extreme heat caused by climate change, the above is what you’re celebrating. And while many Britons no doubt enjoyed some sun this summer, they won’t be enjoying it when they’re the ones experiencing the brunt:

“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.” https://t.co/0xGbNOyclk

— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) January 8, 2025

The extreme storms hitting France and Spain are the flip side to the extreme droughts.

It’s not that extreme weather never happened in the past; it’s that the frequency and intensity of these events will escalate until it becomes impossible to maintain the links and infrastructure that mass society relies on. And all so a few dozen centi-billionaires can continue to get wealthier than they have any need to be – billionaires who openly fund Reform UK.

Uniparty

We’re singling out Reform, but most of the major parties have their heads in the sand when it comes to climate change. A new example of this is Andy Burnham refusing to renationalise the failed private water sector despite the UK facing shortages which are a direct result of corporate greed:

This is just not good enough. Andy Burnham cannot allow Thames Water’s US hedge fund creditors to continue to hold 16 million Brits to ransom.

Failing to take Thames Water into Special Administration immediately represents a total capitulation to the blackmail of US hedge funds.… https://t.co/QqF8QSCEG3

— We Own It (@We_OwnIt) August 24, 2026

We’ve tried fighting climate change with half measures, and the problem only got worse. If we become numb to weather events like the ones we’re seeing in France, there really is no limit to how bad things can get from here.

Featured image via X

By Willem Moore

When the Israeli occupation recently announced a tender for the E1 settlement project, UK foreign secretary Miliband spoke out strongly. He called it “an unacceptable and destructive act”, adding that settlements are a “flagrant breach of international law.”

The warning he issued was clear; E1 would separate the West Bank from East Jerusalem and threaten the viability of a supposed two-state solution.

Noise from the UK-based Israel lobby

Despite current talks that the UK may introduce some sort of ban on UK trade with ‘Israel’s’ illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as of yet we have no idea if Miliband plans to take effective action. But pressure is mounting from lobby groups and criminal ‘Israeli’ officials, to twist the UK’s arm into abandoning the touted trade ban.

‘National security minister,’ Itamar Ben-Gvir, took to X to say:

Someone should update Ed that the British Mandate for the Land of Israel ended in 1948 and that Israel is an independent state.

Perhaps instead of playing make-believe about the Mandate era, he ought to look out of the window at his London, which is rapidly turning into an… https://t.co/C6ZaCm9NA5

— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) August 20, 2026

Pro-Israel lobby group, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a pro-Israel lobby group which operates closely with the ‘Israeli’ government, said in a statement, that it has:

Warned the UK Government that introducing a ban on trade between the UK and Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (which it calls Judea and Samaria) would breach several binding international obligations.

Trade deals trump international law

It has now sent what it calls a 24-page “briefing paper” to Miliband, similar to those threatening legal letters it sends to anyone who criticises the criminal state of ‘Israel’, or shows the slightest support towards Palestine.

The organisation, which by the way is a registered charity here in the UK, argued that if the trade ban is implemented, it:

“would be liable to breach the UK’s legal obligations”

under various trade agreements. The message from UKLFI, is that imposing a settlement trade ban could expose Britain and British businesses to legal challenges. But those agreements are not the only relevant source of international law.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion concerning the Israeli occupation’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory. It concluded, amongst other things, that states must not recognise as lawful the situation created by ‘Israel’s’ unlawful presence, nor assist in maintaining it.

This ruling has implications for countries such as the UK, especially where economic relationships could contribute to sustaining the illegal settlement system, which is built on stolen Palestinian land.

Because the opinion was advisory, instead of a binding judgment, UKLFI is arguing it does not create a legal obligation to stop trade with businesses operating in the occupied West Bank. But this is only the UKLFI’s interpretation of the law.

Settlement goods enter the EU

Major human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch take the opposite view. They claim states should prohibit trade and business activity with these ‘Israeli’ settlements because of their obligations resulting from the ICJ opinion.

Just because UKLFI has constructed a legal argument for why the UK should not act against settlements, it does not mean it is correct. It also does not make the UK’s responsibilities, as defined by the ICJ, disappear. International law should not be optional just because it is politically inconvenient for those supporting the criminal state of ‘Israel.’

The UK government states that ‘Israeli’ settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal. It already distinguishes between ‘Israel’ and its settlements, for trade purposes. Settlement-produced goods do not receive preferential tariff treatment under Britain’s trade arrangements, and the government advises British businesses against economic and financial activity in settlements. But, as yet, it has enforced no ban.

One of UKLFI’s arguments is that goods produced in settlements, which are built on stolen Palestinian land in occupied territory, cannot be distinguished from those coming from ‘Israel.’ But recent evidence from Global Echo has indicated this isn’t the case. Their investigation found that a significant proportion of shipments from ‘Israel’ to the EU actually originated in settlements.

If settlement goods are being wrongly declared as Israeli goods, the system for establishing origin should be improved. And as ‘Israel’ wants products made inside the 1948 borders to benefit from trade arrangements with the UK, it should be the one responsible for establishing where exports come from.

Who knew upholding international law could upset investors…

The UK should not have to unravel the occupation’s supply chains. A ban would put the responsibility on those producing and exporting goods from illegal settlements, where it should be, on ‘Israel.’ And, importantly, this needs to be rigorously enforced.

UKLFI also claims:

Such a ban might discourage US investment in the UK, since companies operating in the UK that comply with it would be exposed to potential sanctions under US Federal and State laws. It would also have the effect of further promoting antisemitism in the UK.

This is outrageous, and is an attempt to let the illegal Israeli occupation and the US dictate UK policy through fear tactics and intimidation. The UK’s duties under the ICJ advisory opinion, the Geneva Conventions, and the UN Charter do not go away because a pro-Israel lobby group says US investors may not approve.

And while UKLFI warns of “antisemitism”, the group itself is increasingly under scrutiny for “lawfare”, and using tactics of intimidation. Its complaints  against doctors, teachers, charities, and human rights organisations, its campaigns to cancel various events, and its legal threats, have led to accusations it is using the law to silence legitimate speech on Palestine. Several of its high-profile cases have already collapsed at tribunal, with independent judges finding no basis for its claims.

UKLFI presents itself as a defender of law and ethics, but this is far from the truth. It fully supports the Israeli occupation- an enterprise built on land theft, forced displacement, and systemic violence. And, similar to the Israeli occupation government itself, UKLFI uses a biased approach to international law and norms, which it applies only when convenient to do so.

This is all part of its strategy, treating trade rules as absolute, but dismissing laws concerned with human rights and the occupation as optional. The result is a legal framework that protects ‘Israel’s’ interests and ignores Palestinian rights.

Featured image via the Canary

By Charlie Jaay

The UK claims its new cruise missile programme will be low cost. We’ll just have to take their word for it because they haven’t disclosed the cost. Despite this Forces News led with the headline “What is Stratus? Inside UK’s low-cost cruise missile as first tests planned for 2028″.

Okay, then…

The MOD-funded outlet reported on 24 August:

The first Stratus missile is scheduled for testing in 2028, a defence minister has said, as the UK Armed Forces look to improve their deep strike precision capability.

Defence Readiness and Industry Minister Luke Pollard said that the missile has finished testing on various elements of the missile, including its airframe design, engine, warhead and seeker performance.

Despite the bold headline, the military news network also noted:

The cost of a single missile has not been disclosed.

They added that according to the Defence Investment Plan (DIP), the programme would cost around £3bn. Which rather negates the idea the missiles will be low cost. If £3bn is cheap, what does an expensive missile programme retail for?

Defence minister Dan Jarvis said in July 2026:

We are building the weapons of the future to keep the UK and Nato secure for decades to come, backed by billions of pounds and working with our closest European allies.

A number of other nations are involved in the project. The overall cost is £37bn.

The Great British War Machine

UK PM Andy Burnham is currently in Ukraine for a state visit. A government press release said the new PM had gone to the country with missiles in mind:

To underline the strength of this commitment, the Prime Minister is set to announce that the Government has agreed that defence firm MBDA can release classified information on UK components for the long-range missile, SCALP, as Ukraine and France look to establish local assembly lines in Ukraine.

The missile is the French-produced version of the UK’s Storm Shadow, with both using shared French and British technology.

Adding:

The move follows the UK being the first to gift long-range strike weapons for defensive purposes to Ukraine in 2023 and will allow the French and Ukrainians to move forward with the Ukrainian assembly of the missile.

It also complements the major UK effort to rapidly develop low-cost advanced long-range strike weapons for Ukraine through Project Brakestop.

Typical of the UK government to make grand claims about the costs of missiles without disclosing what those costs will be. As with so much of UK military and foreign policy, the public are being kept in the dark. It helps keep the Great British War Machine rolling along.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

MPs, academics, and other leading Black figures have signed a Good Law Project letter agreeing with the demands of students for action against Cambridge University vice-chancellor Deborah Prentice for her role in the events that lead to the death of Cambridge professor Jason Arday.

Arday was hounded by British ‘mainstream’ press in a campaign triggered by Nathan Cofnas, an Israel-supporting white-supremacist and ‘racial scientist’. Long before Arday’s death, Cofnas’s colleagues at Ghent University had written to the university detailing his unfitness for his role. He has now been suspended, but defended by the Trump regime and far-right ‘academics’, and given space by the Wall Street Journal to portray himself as the victim.

Earlier today, 24 August 2026, the Cambridge Black Alumni and Students’ Collective (CBASC) demanded action from the university to protect students and staff from racist pile-ons and an independent investigation into Arday’s death:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Cambridge Black Alumni & Student Collective (CBASC) (@camblackasc)

In just the few hours since then, at the time of writing, well over 120 leading, mostly Black figures have signed GLP’s letter supporting CBASC’s demands.

The letter reads:

To: Lord Chris Smith, Cambridge University Chancellor

The students of the University of Cambridge demand the immediate resignation of Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice and support an independent investigation into the conduct of senior leadership.
Ten days ago, on the 14th of August, tragically and preventably, Professor Jason Arday died.

A sustained campaign consisting of 249 articles published through major national news outlets over 22 days was launched against Professor Jason Arday. During this period, the university, under the Vice Chancellor’s leadership, failed in its responsibility to safeguard Professor Arday and other racialised and marginalised members of the University. The Vice-Chancellor’s misconduct and mishandling contributed significantly to the preventable death of Professor Arday.

The University initially defended Professor Arday against what it deemed a “vile smear campaign”. However, four days prior to his death, the Vice-Chancellor bowed to public pressure and launched an investigation into Professor Arday. Her statement was a screeching u-turn which abandoned an academic being attacked in connection with his appointment by the University, describing this as a “troubling case” and later an “aberration”.

What exactly was the support, we would like to know, that the University provided to Professor Arday after his resignation? Can the Vice-Chancellor confirm that the University did not encourage Professor Arday to resign?

Her silence around the racist nature of this public campaign in the three gruelling weeks of public scrutiny immensely harmed the well-being of Professor Arday and Black students and staff across the University.

This speaks to a wider pattern of harm towards the Black community being ignored by the Vice-Chancellor. In 2024, 58 formal complaints were lodged with the University of Cambridge about Nathan Cofnas following his racist views about Black intellectual ability. Following an investigation, these complaints were dismissed. These dismissals, we believe, prioritised appeasing the right wing media above the protection of the University of Cambridge’s own scholars who had documented profound mistrust from those experiencing racism.

The Vice Chancellor has severely failed to uphold the legislatively mandated commitment to freedom from discrimination. Instead, her statements fuelled the racially motivated campaign targeting Professor Arday. Despite multiple reported warnings that Professor Arday needed to be safeguarded, the Vice-Chancellor and senior leadership of the University repeatedly ignored concerns raised by those closest to him, exacerbating the risk to his life.

The Vice-Chancellor’s statements on 11th and 14th August, the latter published only hours before his death, did not express any concern for Professor Arday’s wellbeing.

The Vice-Chancellor’s demonstrated actions and inaction directly contributed to the tragic and preventable death of a beloved professor. We have lost confidence in her stewardship of this university, and her ability to enact the necessary change that needs to happen.

Along with the Vice-Chancellor’s immediate resignation, we concur with the demands raised by the Cambridge Black Alumni and Student Collective, dated 24 August, as necessary next steps to accountability, justice and healing.

The letter form does not display all those who have signed, but among those who are visible at the time of writing are MPs Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Diane Abbott, former MP Claudia Webbe, author Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, Prof Sir Patrick Vernon and former police chief Leroy Logan.

Add your own signature here.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

The British Army has published an update on its new Ground Based Surveillance Radar (GBSR). A small detachment of artillery soldiers has been testing the system on the Canadian prairie alongside local troops. What the MOD media department did not mention was that the AI-capable radar is made by the genocide-linked Israeli firm Elbit Systems UK.

The article published on 25 April describes the training mission:

53 Air Assault Battery, 5th Regiment Royal Artillery is using the new Ground Based Surveillance Radar (GBSR) as part of a network of sophisticated sensors working together to win the fight on Exercise Rhino Bizz.

The system, the army said, was delivered:

to the Catterick-based unit in late 2025. It is used to track the location and movement of soldiers and vehicles on the ground, and aircraft and drones in the air. It can also be used for fall of shot correction, working with artillery and mortars to track exactly where rounds are landing, and correct their aim, destroying the target quicker.

The training exercise also tested integration of the AI-powered targeting gear:

Troops tested the recce-strike concept of fighting, bringing together surveillance, reconnaissance and strike platforms in an AI-enabled network able to identify and destroy targets faster and further.

One staff sergeant described the AI capabilities as a “hive mind”:

Once one sensor picks up something, we can direct all the other sensors onto that track and really build up a clear picture of what it is and what it’s doing – and then decide what we want to do about it. Using AI to merge and interpret all the data speeds that process from minutes to seconds, and that gives us a headstart on the enemy.

What can possibly go wrong?

Elbit UK, an Israeli firm

All pretty standard fare for a military exercise in the vast training areas the UK borrows from the Canadian government. But the connection to Israel and its arms industry went unmentioned in the piece.

Arms industry publications have reported with the full details for years. Defence Today wrote in November 2025:

Elbit Systems UK (ESUK) has delivered the first Ground Based Surveillance Radar (GBSR) systems to the British Army’s Royal Artillery following successful live fire trials earlier this year.

The initial delivery comprises 55 radar units along with associated support solutions and is part of a contract awarded by the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) in May 2023 for a total of 90 portable GBSR systems, with an option for an additional 40 units.

 Israel Defence reported on 17 March 2025:

Elbit Systems UK, a subsidiary of Israeli Defense giant Elbit Systems is in the process of delivering Ground-Based Surveillance Radar (GBSR) units to the British Army. These radars are deployed to detect threats at short and medium ranges on the front line.

And as far back as May 2023, Army Recognition reported:

Elbit Systems UK has been awarded a contract from the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to provide a series of Ground-Based Surveillance Radar (GBSR) systems, manufactured and developed in the UK and Europe, to the British Armed Forces to support front-line threat detection for a range of end-users.

The British government published details of the contract in 2023; you can access those here.

Israeli genocide firms

Campaign against the Arms Trade (CAAT) describes Elbit as:

Israel’s largest arms producer, and the 24th biggest arms producer globally.

Elbit’s UK wing has:

a workforce of over 680. Elbit has several further subsidiaries located across 16 sites in the UK. Elbit’s UK companies export globally, particularly to Israel. Elbit UK Ltd has obtained two UK military export licenses to the country since 2021.

Elbit products include drones, surveillance equipment and border security gear. Israel uses them in Gaza, The Occupied Territories and Lebanon. The British Army’s website reminds its soldiers they are:

subject to the law wherever they are serving.

This does not seem to extend to the purchase and use of equipment made by genocide-linked arms firms with headquarters in Israel.  Clearly, the UK should stop selling arms to Israel. That’s not controversial. But the UK also needs to stop buying occupation-tested military equipment from the settler-colonial state too.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

On Monday 24 August, Reform UK’s deputy leader — Richard Tice — appeared in an interview on Times Radio. He set out his far-right party’s plans to prioritise married, British-born, working couples under the age of 35 for affordable housing.

Tice gave the interview ahead of a press conference in which he’ll set out the policy in more detail. However, even from the Sparknotes version he gave on air, this sounds like a fascist-friendly car crash. Take a listen, if you can stomach it:

British married couples would get priority for social housing, says Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, but he was unclear where same-sex married couples would be on that list.

"As long as we're building plenty of homes, then there will be sufficient room for them."@CalumAM pic.twitter.com/ePkijvq13K

— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) August 24, 2026

‘The housing system is broken’ (says the landlord)

Tice begins with a boast:

My lifetime has been spent building homes, in property. I’ve actually build more homes than the previous 24 housing ministers this century combined. So, we’re gonna get stuff done, we’re gonna build homes, and the simple fact is the housing system is broken, the affordable housing system is broken, and Reform will fix it.

Of course, it’s much easier to build homes when you’ve no need to make them affordable. And then, you can really save money by (allegedly) dodging hundreds of thousands of pounds in tax.

According to the Times, Tice channeled shareholder dividends through dormant businesses and an offshore trust between 2018 and 2021, avoiding a possible £600,000 in taxes. The Reform deputy, true to his party line, called this an ‘establishment smear’

And don’t even get us started on Reform’s inability to budget a County Council, never mind a sweeping affordable housing program. However, the party (like Tice, allegedly) have a habit of forgetting they have to pay their taxes. That probably helps smooth the cracks in the balance book a little.

Reforms says ‘having British children…is a good thing’

When asked whether a married couple would get priority over a single person, Tice answered that:

Yes, that is the preference. Well, families are a good thing. Having British children, British-born children is a good thing. We need to encourage that. And it’s a very natural, normal thing, has been over centuries, for people to get together, to get married, have children and contribute to their communities. And everything that we’re doing is focused solely on that.

Lots of British families making lots of British babies. No fascist undertones to that at all, no sir.

It’s funny how often things that are “very natural” and “normal” need to be encouraged by government policy. One would think that, if people have to be threatened with having no home in order to get married and have babies, then getting married and having babies might not actually be all that natural.

‘In an ideal world’ you’d be married

Tice’s interviewer then reminded him that a single person might also have children. The Reform deputy replied:

They might. But in an ideal world, it is well known that married couples – children in married couples, for example – will do really well at school. And we want to encourage that.

Of course, sometimes life doesn’t work out. We understand that. But as an objective, that is surely preferable.

Just so it’s said: marriage is a legal contract. It’s not a bloody magic spell, it doesn’t suddenly make people into better parents. Not getting married isn’t a sign that ‘life doesn’t work out’ – not that we’d expect Reform to encourage people making their own choices.

The children of married couples do well in large part because their families have two incomes to support them. Rent profiteers like Tice and his ilk have ensured that dual-incomes are one of the few ways to keep a stable roof over your head — and even that’s getting dicey.

And, of course, if Reform was actually interested in using social engineering to create families with higher-attaining children, they’d be trying to encourage people to create gay families. After all, multiple recent studies suggest that kids raised by ‘same-sex’ couples do better in schools.

Except that Reform isn’t actually interested in educational attainment — it’s interested in conformity. Plus, the party still has a homophobia problem — with leader Farage stating that legalising gay marriage was “wrong” as recently as last year.

Sure, sure, he was arguing that it should have been a manifesto commitment, blah blah. ‘I support the gays, but not their reckless disregard for political due-process’ – I bet, buddy.

‘There’ll be an allocation list’

Speaking of which, the Times Radio interviewer asked Tice where a married same-sex couple would fit on his your priority list. As you’d expect, the answer was… well, it was a bit weird, really. Tice replied:

Well there’ll be an allocation list. But at the end of the day, what we’re focused on is young British workers first. Same-sex couples, British couples, working – they will have priority over those coming from overseas.

‘There’ll be an allocation list’ – not even an elegant swerve of a simple question there, deputy party leader. Reform really are losing their touch.

Even the softball interviewer couldn’t help but pick Tice up on the fact that married British couples would also have priority over other British couples who weren’t married under Reform’s new plans. Here, Tice really lost his thread:

There will be, within the British community of young workers, ah, as long as we’re building plenty of homes, there will be sufficient room for them, because if you add up the half-a-million-plus homes currently occupied by overseas people, overseas nationals, and the 500,000 we’re going to build over the next decade, that’s a million homes for young British workers.

That’s the right thing to do, it’s the fair thing to do. Reform are going to fix this broken system.

As a reminder, Labour pledged to build 1.5m new homes over the course of parliament. Sure, they’re currently running behind, but then, that’s new homes we’re talking about — not the half a million Tice is apparently planning on nicking from immigrants… again, no fascist undertones there in the slightest.

Join us tomorrow for some analysis of Reform’s actual housing policy, rather than Tice’s hopefully piss-poor explanation of it. But for now, as a rough guideline: if it’s the right thing to do, and the fair thing to do, you won’t catch Reform UK proposing it on the radio.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

Nearly 40 campaign groups, individuals and media outlets have released a statement of total solidarity with independent investigative journalist Ravi Nair. He’s currently facing relentless harassment and attacks from the oligarchic Adani Group.

South Asia Solidarity Group, UK, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India), India Labour Solidarity UK, and South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC), Canada, issued the statement, along with nearly 35 other diasporic and international human rights groups.

The joint statement demands an immediate end to the harassment of Ravi Nair by Indian courts and police. It calls for the withdrawal of cases against him and an end to the misuse of criminal defamation and draconian laws to silence journalists and activists in India. And it demands protection of press freedom and free speech, and accountability and transparency in matters involving corporate-state relations.

The statement – Justice for Ravi Nair!

We, the undersigned groups, condemn the shrinking space for freedom of expression and press freedom in India. We stand in total solidarity with independent investigative journalist Ravi Nair who is currently facing relentless harassment and attacks from the Adani Group.

On 11 February 2026, Nair was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for his posts on X that allegedly suggest the “political patronage”, “financial irregularities” and “unethical conduct” of Adani Enterprises, the flagship firm of the Adani Group. Nair’s lawyer argued that the posts and comments were based on publicly available material and constitute fair comment and criticism.

CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Kunal Majumder noted:

The conviction of journalist Ravi Nair for criminal defamation sets a dangerous precedent for press freedom and free speech in India. Laws that allow imprisonment for defamation stifle public interest reporting and deter scrutiny of powerful actors. The Indian government must ensure these provisions are not used to prevent legitimate journalism.

With this case pending appeal, the Adani Group, acting through the Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, has brought another case against Nair. This time it centres round his social media posts about an article he co-wrote in the Washington Post alleging that the government of India directed the Life Insurance Corporation, an Indian publicly funded organisation, to invest in the Adani group. An Ahmedabad Court quashed Nair’s appeal against the FIR (First Information Report). This was followed by a raid on Nair’s home by Gujarat Police, accompanied by their Delhi counterparts. They seized two of his phones, his son’s laptop, and the laptop and iPad of a colleague who happened to be at the house and who is not an accused in the case. The police refused to provide a hash value for the items taken away. Without a hash value, it is impossible to know whether a device has been tampered with after seizure.

Clearly journalism is a crime in today’s India, with free speech and freedom of expression increasingly under attack since 2014. India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index has steadily worsened, with a rank of 140 out of 180 countries in 2013 down to 157 in 2026.

A number of draconian laws are being employed to thwart fundamental freedoms. Additionally, street vigilantes have been emboldened to carry out attacks on journalists reporting on and exposing Hindu supremacist fascism (Hindutva) or reporting on corporate crimes.

The harassment of Ravi Nair is occurring against a background of challenges to legitimate reporting and commentary about the Adani Group. In September 2025, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry used a court order to remove a couple of hundred YouTube videos and instagram posts about the Group (Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)).

According to the Free Speech Collective’s latest findings, India saw over 300 violations of free speech in the first quarter of 2025, from murdered journalists to banned films.

The restriction on free speech comes from a government whose ministers and other elected officials spew hate speech in the public sphere with impunity.

In the fascist corporate-aligned state that India is today, journalists like Ravi Nair are being punished for reporting injustices and speaking truth to power.

We call upon the Indian diaspora across the globe, civil society and workers’ organisations, journalists, activists and all conscientious people to stand against state repression and the impunity of corporate billionaires like Adani.

We demand an immediate end to the harassment of Ravi Nair by the courts and police and the withdrawal of cases against him. We also demand an end to the misuse of criminal defamation and draconian laws to silence journalists and activists; the protection of press freedom and free speech; and accountability and transparency in matters involving corporate-state relations.

Justice for Ravi Nair! Journalism is not a crime!

Signatories

• South Asia Solidarity Group, UK.
• International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India).
• India Labour Solidarity, UK.
• Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy, The Netherlands.
• United Kingdom-Indian Muslim Council (UK-IMC).
• Hindus for Human Rights UK.
• 12ummah.com.
• Justice For All Canada.
• Hindus for Human Rights USA.
• The Humanism Project Australia.
• South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC), Canada.
• Culture Unstained, UK.
• The Canary, UK.
• Indian Alliance Paris.
• Hindus for Human Rights ANZ.
• Fossil Free Science Museum, UK.
• Indus Legacy.
• Extinction Rebellion Global.
• Boston South Asian Coalition.
• CERAS (Centre sur l’asie du sud), Canada.
• Canadian Forum for Human Rights and Democracy in India (CFHRDI).
• London Mining Network, UK.
• Turbine Bagh, UK.
• Prof Saibaba Study Circle, UK.
• Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
• Just Peace Advocates/Mouvement Pour Une Paix Juste, Canada.
• The Canadian BDS Coalition and International BDS Allies.
• Fighty fighters, UK.
• United Front UK.
• Progressive South Asian Society, UK.
• Azaad Brussels.
• Inquilabi NL, The Netherlands.
• Secours Rouge Toulouse.
• Anti-Imperialist Front.
• Critical Diasporic South Asian Feminisms Collective, Canada.
• Collective of Socialist Republicans, UK.
• Solidarity Screenings Glasgow.
• Red Clyde, UK.
• Young Struggle.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

Former Unite general secretary Len McCluskey has commented on the Unite union’s cover-up of bullying by his successor Sharon Graham’s husband Jack Clarke.

Specifically, McCluskey has condemned Unite’s habitual flinging of smears to try to divert attention from Graham’s anti-union behaviour. The union did this to protect Clarke from the consequences of his actions — and from Skwawkbox-Canary’s exposure of both.

Background

Skwawkbox first exposed years ago that staff working under Clarke had recorded months’ worth of his bullying and misogyny in 2018 and presented it to Unite as part of a formal grievance against him. After lobbying by Graham, the union covered up the abuse – and initiated disciplinary proceedings against Clarke’s victims.

Eventually, the bullied staff were paid off. Lawyers, while trying to deny the content of the recordings, inadvertently confirmed Unite had destroyed it. But in August 2026 Maddison Wheeldon and Skwawkbox exposed surviving copies of the transcripts of the abuse. Moreover, Skwawkbox also revealed Graham’s own words as she haggled over the terms of Clarke’s slap on the wrist. They also published details about her discussing the removal of the abused staff.

And when contacted for comment, the union’s statement flung smears — not at Clarke’s abusive husband or the incumbent general secretary’s nepotism and cover-up, but at previous general secretary McCluskey and his team.

Slap-back

McCluskey first spoke out on Graham’s smear campaign against him a year ago, describing it as “6 pages of smears and innuendo”. Even some of Graham’s habitual allies condemned it, too.

But he didn’t wait so long this time. In the comments of the Canary article that exposed Clarke and quoted Unite’s scurrilous deflection, McCluskey condemned the ‘disgraceful’ smears as a complete lack of “professional ethics” on the part of Unite and its spokesman. Furthermore, he also — perfectly accurately — refuted the additional Unite smear that Skwawkbox and the Canary were exposing Graham for McCluskey:

It’s is disgraceful for Steven Pinder to issue a statement like that ( even if under the orders of Sharon Graham ) has he no professional ethics left. I have no contact or involvement with either skwakbox [sic] or cannery [sic] and never have done. This constant mudslinging without a shred of evidence in the hope some might stick is deplorable. How sad to see what our once great union has become

Leopard spots

Since his 2018 bullying and Graham’s cover-up — and her win in the 2021 Unite general secretary election — Jack Clarke has not changed his spots.

Clarke was installed, under Graham and outside Unite’s usual appointment procedures, to run a newly-created unit. This happened despite being on a final warning for his abuse. He then continued his pattern, creating such outrage and disgust among staff of his new department that they went on strike too. Most of the women forced to work with him quit. But Graham again sided with the bad boss against the workers — and her aides even organised against them.

Despite running a union, Graham was repeatedly accused of using appalling, anti-union tactics against Clarke’s staff and other workers employed by Unite, leading to several strikes. Unite has also attempted to disrupt attempts by officers to organise in their workplace. And the union has spent huge amounts of members money on legal action – also to protect Clarke.

Birds of a feather

Nor is Graham untouched by allegations concerning her own behaviour. In 2023, she was accused of launching such an abusive tirade against former BBC journalist Ben Davies, her new communications director, that he quit and received compensation. So rapid was the departure that he was gone before his appointment was even announced. Unite responded with smears then, too – and repeatedly since.

In the first of the latest batch of exposés, Maddison Wheeldon wrote:

Husband and wife duo must be held accountable

Sharon Graham seems reluctant to take heed of how serious these issues are as she promises to uphold and advocate for workers’ rights.

However, these issues have only continued in the new department Jack Clarke had been handed by his wife, outside of the union’s typical appointment procedures.

There have been reports of similar complaints, disputes and even strike action due to allegations of ongoing abusive behaviour and anti-union tactics.

Now, the damning evidence detailing the extent of Clarke’s misdemeanours has been exposed, answers and accountability must follow.

That applies now more than ever.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Iran has redrawn the US military footprint in the Middle East, locking the US out of 15 of its colonial bases — potentially permanently. This includes a major military base in Bahrain, the damage to which has forced the US to stretch its supply lines to breaking point.

The Iranian strikes have led to the Trump administration clamping down on accurate coverage of the war. Bothersome reporters are now being placed on a black-list.

America’s grip on “its” military bases slips

Former US general and security analyst Barry McCaffrey posted on X on 23 August:

In my judgement, the US Armed Forces have probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access the Gulf States. US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe. https://t.co/oG4aeEshab

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) August 22, 2026

The US naval base in Bahrain was struck repeatedly. Footage from early 2026 show blazing fires within the facility:

Two reporters and the editor-in-chief of the partially Pentagon-funded outlet, Stars and Stripes, were recently sacked without explanation. Critics have inferred that the unceremonious firing was possibly linked to their reporting on Iranian strikes against the US military base in Bahrain.

Wonder why Hegseth fired senior staffers at Stars and Stripes? It’s because of reporting like this:

“Nearly six months after the U.S. Navy evacuated 1,300 family members from Bahrain at the start of the Iran war, officials are saying the evacuees cannot return for the…

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) August 23, 2026

CNN reported on 22 August:

Journalism advocacy groups decried the firings and criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for trying to manipulate independent news coverage of the military.

The outlet added that:

Reporter Lara Korte confirmed to CNN that she was fired on Friday along with publisher Max Lederer and editor-in-chief Erik Slavin. CBS News and The Washington Post first reported the separation notices.

Crackdown on journalists

US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

The US has achieved none of its original war aims. Iran predictably closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil channel, once attacked — creating a global energy crisis. Iran has said the war will continue until:

the enemy’s inevitable and permanent humiliation, disgrace, regret, and surrender.

Trump came to power on an anti-war ‘America First’ ticket. He now faces worldwide humiliation.

US president Donald Trump’s administration has countered solid reporting with threats. As the Canary reported on 7 August, this includes over questions about the US running out of missiles:

Trump recently threatened “long-term jail sentences” for anyone leaking information about alleged munition shortages facing the US, accusing them of making “treasonous statements”.

He said:

Long-term jail sentences will be sought!

Yet while Trump dismisses reports of shortages, his administration has moved to restrict exports of tungsten scrap and black mass — two materials critical to weapons production.

Intercept investigative reporter Nick Turse reported on 24 August:

U.S. Central Command maintains a secret directory of journalists who have been blacklisted by the press office.

Turse added:

Under self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. military has mounted the most aggressive assault on press freedom in memory, from an effort to outlaw “unauthorized” questions from reporters to imposing unconstitutional restrictions on journalists’ access to the Pentagon.

The Trump administration is knows Iran has redrawn the map of US colonial influence in the Gulf. Iran has humiliated the US. Trump’s MAGA bluster counts for little. The president has assured American decline.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

Jolyon Maugham KC has hit back at an attack piece against his non-profit Good Law Project (GLP) published in the Daily Mail. On 23 August, Maugham posted: 

I’ve seen some astonishingly stupid attack pieces in the Mail in my time but this one really does take the biscuit.

It’s based on something we put out three months ago – on our own website – from which you can tell it’s not news but an attempt to scare us off calling out the Mail’s vile racism.

It won’t work.

The article in question, published on 23 August, was titled “Woke barrister’s ‘hypocrisy’ as he takes left-wing campaign group Good Law Project offshore.”

After listing the inaccuracies of the article, the Good Law Project founder stated that:

It’s why we need press regulation – so they [news outlets] are accountable for what to all intents and purposes are their lies.

‘Enormously hypocritical’… is it?

The Mail article stated in its introduction that:

legal experts say the move is ‘enormously hypocritical’ because becoming a trust will ‘give it the benefits’ of being set up like a charity without having oversight from regulators.

One of the legal experts who stated that the trust structure would give the GLP the ‘benefits’ of a charity without Charity Commission oversight was… the Good Law Project itself. Three months ago, on 8 May, it posted an update about its ownership structure, stating that:

When Good Law Project was set up in 2017 by Jolyon Maugham he wanted the public interest features of a charity but outside of the moving political guardrails policed by the Charity Commission. So he adopted a structure which mirrored many of the features of charities.

The GLP explained that Maugham set up the GLP as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. This means that it can’t declare dividends.

‘An internet troll’

The Daily Mail also quoted “veteran barrister” Barbara Rich, who said:

the restructuring meant that GLP would operate ‘without the burden of charity registration’.

This would be a lot more meaningful if the GLP had ever operated as a charity. However, it has not and never did. Likewise, in his social media post, Maugham pointed out that the GLP won’t receive tax relief — a major benefit of being a charity.

Its lack of charity status gives it more free rein to challenge both the government and the Charities Commission itself, which it has done on multiple occasions. Rich called this being “pretty antagonistic towards the Charity Commission generally”.

In his social media post, Maugham also called Rich “an Internet troll” who posts “obsessively” about both the GLP and Maugham himself. 

Good Law Project gets the Daily Mail treatment

The May GLP article went on to explain the reasoning behind its shift to Jersey:

Another feature of charities is that they are not owned by any individual or individuals. Instead they exist for a purpose. As Good Law Project approaches its tenth anniversary, the time has come to replicate this feature too.

Jolyon has been replaced as owner of Good Law Project by a Jersey ‘purpose’ trust. The purpose of the trust will be to hold the membership interest in Good Law Project. It has been set up in Jersey because the UK’s legal system has no such thing as ‘purpose’ trusts, except for charities, and Jersey’s legal system does.

The trust structure also means that other people can now join as trustees, rather than Maugham having sole ownership. This, the GLP stated, also meant that it could operate “a bit more like a charity board”.

However, it’s very hard to read ‘we’re restructuring in Jersey’ without immediately thinking ‘tax dodge’. In anticipation of this conclusion, the GLP stated clearly that it:

will remain UK resident for tax purposes and there will be no change to how its income is taxed. There will be no change to its articles, the asset lock will obviously remain in place, and it will continue to be unable to declare dividends.

‘Pathetic’ attack against Good Law Project

Unfortunately, the Mail neglected to mention that part of the GLP’s statement. Instead, it chose to quote James Mews, of Jersey’s Amati Law, who chaired a steering group to “improve Trusts Law on the island”. Mews stated that:

A Jersey purpose trust has a greater level of confidentiality and privacy regarding control, ownership and resources than a UK company.

A UK company registered at Companies House will still be subject to stringent, regulatory oversight.

This is completely true. However, as Maugham pointed out:

it deliberately misses the point Good Law Project will continue to have exactly the same UK company law obligations it always did.

The reporting is pathetic, intellectually dishonest and exactly the sort of thing you would expect the Mail to carry.

And that’s just what we at the Canary would say of the Daily Mail, to boot. Well, at least in polite company, in any case…

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

The ‘Shenstone 5′ anti-genocide activists have spoken out after receiving only conditional discharges for damaging a UAV Engines Ltd factory belonging to Israeli murder drone manufacturer Elbit.

Shenstone 5: rare and fair trial

The Shenstone 5 praised the judge for allowing them a fair trial – a rarity since the UK state’s war on the rights of citizens to protect Israel. The court allowed the activists to plead their political motivations for taking the action and even to show evidence of Israel’s use of drones made at the factory. And the judge even agreed they were prisoners of conscience.

Small wonder, then, that an Israel-compromised regime is determined to prevent juries from hearing about the crimes Israel commits with these weapons – or even of their legal right to acquit:

Following our trial, the Shenstone 4 were found guilty of criminal damage but are relieved to have been given only a conditional discharge. This has been almost 4 years after the action.

During the trial we were given the chance to each speak as to our motivations, what we knew about Elbit and why we did what we did. The lawyers also commented on these aspects. As such, we are glad to have been able to politicise the trial.

The judge even allowed the submitting of news articles about the Hermes 450 [drone], CAAT report on Elbit’s export licences etc as evidence after the first day.

The prosecution failed to present clear evidence regarding the sum of damage we did – they failed to present the relevant witness (two others also didn’t show up and hence the claims of violence from us also couldn’t be corroborated) but it was established that we did break 6 windows.

The one person they called up to give an estimate about the damage admitted, during cross-examination, that he knew the engines made here are used in military drones and specifically are also sent to the other Elbit- owned factory in Leicester. He had said in his statement that the business conducts lawful business but our lawyers grilled him and established that he was not in a position to say this – they got him to claim he doesn’t really know where engines do and don’t go.

The judge, after hearing our defences and evidence, said that it was clearly a crime of conscience and that he was convinced as to our belief that we were doing the right thing. As a result he gave a very light sentence and, unusually, did not force any compensation to Elbit.

We had feared having to compensate Elbit and also went in mentally prepared for for a short custodial (even if suspended) sentence if unlucky. The conditional discharge means that this will essentially disappear from our record as long as we don’t get convicted of a crime committed in the 12 months. He explained he was unable to find us not guilty due to the letter of the law.

But the action still carried a terrible cost in the face of state repression and contempt – though the Shenstone 5 said it was nothing compared to the suffering of the Palestinians:

This conviction only serves to show the imperialist injustice that lies in the so-called “justice” system. Our own comrade and co-defendant JoJo was deeply affected by the stress of this prolonged case and repression of the anti-Elbit movement, which he faced directly. This was a contributing factor to him taking his own life. We affirm that he never should have faced legal proceedings for acting to prevent genocide.

The prosecutor sought to bully us, particularly Jay, with circular questioning and and putting forward absurd statements. He told us our actions were pointless and did nothing for the Palestinians but also argued that the damage was “significant”. He said that we should have pursued other means including reporting war crimes to the police’s war crimes department, lobbying MPs and even emailing UAV Engines to tell them about our concerns. This exposed the absurd and genocidal logic of liberalism to us.

Further to this, the legal system refuses to hold the real criminals and perpetrators of genocide to account. The Palestinians continue to be the principal subjects of the genocidal settler-colonialism of Zionism. The judge said something along the lines that some of what was being disputed needed an investigation into UAV Engines but that this was beyond the purview of the court.

No repression on us can be compared to that the Palestinians face. We do not regret our actions and for this reason we have won. Long live the resistance.

Inquilab Zindabad
Shenstone 5

Featured image supplied

By Skwawkbox

On Sunday 23 August, Andy Burnham visited Ukraine. And his first trip to the besieged nation has given the UK media the perfect opportunity to once again demonstrate how ridiculous they are:

Call me old-fashioned if you like, but a zip-up polo shirt on a visit to a warzone? What on earth is he thinking? Even Boris worse a suit. Knowing how the Ukrainians like their protocols to be respected, I imagine this will have caused some offence. Surely the FCDO advise PMs on… https://t.co/F4Fr77FWhh

— Iain Dale (@IainDale) August 24, 2026

Un-suit-able

There’s quite a lot to think about in Dale’s comment, as we’ll demonstrate:

Call me old-fashioned if you like, but a zip-up polo shirt on a visit to a warzone? What on earth is he thinking?

At this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Dale wanted to see Burnham in camo and body armour. The next sentence put that notion to bed:

Even Boris worse a suit.

Okay, so what did this suit achieve exactly? It certainly wouldn’t have protected him from the bullets – not unless it was made of a Top Secret material from Q Branch.

The next point from Dale was probably the wildest thing he said:

Knowing how the Ukrainians like their protocols to be respected, I imagine this will have caused some offence.

Famously, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was criticised in the White House earlier this year for not wearing a suit. His sartorial choice was no blip, either; the guy never wears suits. In fact, he notably wasn’t wearing one when he met Andy Burnham:

Burnham to hand long-range missile blueprints to Zelensky as he visits Kyiv https://t.co/73zJ6NqILE

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) August 24, 2026

Dale ended on the following point:

Surely the [Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office] advise PMs on things like this?

We imagine they did advise Burnham, and that said advice was: ‘probably best not to dress up given who you’re meeting, eh?‘.

Hysteria

Dale wasn’t the only one to become uncontrollably upset by the image of Burnham’s polo neck; GB News had this to say:

'It's totally performative. It's ridiculous, he's not a man of the people!'

Andy Burnham faces criticism as he arrives in Ukraine for his first foreign visit as Prime Minister wearing a polo shirt. pic.twitter.com/XNql9qno4g

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 24, 2026

It’s not wrong to suggest the decision was ‘performative’; everything world leaders do in public is a performance. Burnham almost certainly did have conversations about what he wore, and he no doubt anticipated the move upsetting our permanently offended media class.

Actual problems with Burnham

Saying all the above, there are plenty of good reasons to be unhappy with Burnham, as we’ve extensively reported:

• Burnham’s £350k pre-PM donor revelations expose Labour Together continuity op.
• His reported oil plan is an insult to our intelligence.
• Burnham’s actions since becoming PM scream ‘business as usual’.

Featured image via Henry Nicholls

By Willem Moore

Hull City marked their Premier League return with a controlled, confident and fully deserved 2-0 win over Manchester United at the MKM Stadium, delivering a jolt to Michael Carrick’s side on the opening weekend. First‑half goals from Semi Ajayi and Nobel Mendy exposed United’s defensive frailties and set the tone for an afternoon where the visitors never looked comfortable.

United arrived with optimism after a strong finish last season. Hull arrived with noise, energy and a point to prove. By the final whistle, only one of those moods remained.

Ajayi strikes as Manchester United unravel early

Hull’s opener came from the kind of moment Carrick will recognise all too well. A routine ball into the box wasn’t dealt with, Manchester United hesitated, and Ajayi reacted quickest, poking home from close range on 17 minutes. It was scruffy, simple and exactly the type of goal United have been warned about.

The MKM Stadium erupted. Hull, back in the top flight for the first time since 2017, fed off the atmosphere. Acun Ilicali had spoken pre‑match about people writing his team off, inside 20 minutes, Hull were making their own argument.

United, meanwhile, looked physically second best. Hull’s intensity, particularly in midfield, forced mistakes and pinned Carrick’s side deeper than they wanted. Every Hull attack carried purpose. Every Manchester United defensive action looked improvised.

Mendy doubles the damage

The second goal arrived before the break and again exposed Manchester United’s lack of organisation. A simple delivery, a clean run, and Mendy rose unchallenged to power a header past Senne Lammens on 38 minutes. Hull didn’t need to be spectacular; they just needed to be sharp. United weren’t.

By half-time, Carrick had seen enough. Marcus Rashford was sent on for his first competitive United appearance in 618 days. It was a moment of significance for the forward, but it didn’t change the pattern of the game.

Rashford’s introduction didn’t bring the spark United needed. Hull remained compact, disciplined and confident. United remained flat.

Bryan Mbeumo carved out Manchester United’s only genuine second‑half chance, breaking into space before firing a half‑volley that Konstantinos Tzolakis saved superbly with one hand. It was the kind of moment Hull had been dealing with all afternoon, decisive, calm, assured.

United never built sustained pressure. Hull never looked rattled. The newly‑promoted side managed the game with maturity, slowing it when needed, speeding it when space opened, and winning duels across the pitch.

Hull’s control highlights problems

Carrick’s side finished last season strongly, but this performance revived familiar concerns. Hull’s wing‑backs were aggressive, their midfielders relentless, and their forwards led superbly by Oli McBurnie held the ball, drew fouls and kept United pinned back.

McBurnie’s work rate and hold‑up play were central to Hull’s approach. He gave his team territory, time and a focal point. Hull didn’t just defend well; they carried a threat throughout.

Manchester United, by contrast, lacked intensity. They were second to loose balls, slow to react in transitions and vulnerable at set‑plays an issue Bruno Fernandes later admitted had been flagged before kick-off.

Hull’s win is more than an opening‑day surprise. It’s a statement that they intend to compete, not simply survive. Their organisation, physicality and clarity of approach suggest a team comfortable at this level.

For United, the defeat triggers familiar questions. Defensive reinforcements have been demanded by supporters, and with around 10 days left in the window, the pressure on recruitment and on Carrick will now intensify.

Manchester United’s next fixtures offer little margin for error. Hull, meanwhile, take momentum into their schedule, buoyed by a performance that showcased both quality and resilience.

Hull show fight as Manchester United show fragility

Hull’s performance was built on energy, organisation and belief. They were first to duels, aggressive in transitions and composed in possession. Their wing‑backs stretched Manchester United, their midfielders controlled the tempo, and their forwards carried constant threat.

United lacked those qualities. They were passive, disjointed and repeatedly exposed. Carrick’s side will argue it’s only one game, but the manner of the defeat ensures the conversation won’t be quiet.

Hull City earned this win. They were sharper, hungrier and more cohesive. Manchester United were not. For Carrick, the challenge now is to ensure this isn’t the start of another familiar story.

Featured Image courtesy of Reuters

By Faz Ali

According to newly released data, graduate jobs have dropped by nearly 50%. AI is among the given explanations for this drop; as are rising costs. Regardless of what’s most at fault here, though, this clearly isn’t a sustainable situation if it’s accurate:

‘The number of graduate jobs has fallen almost in half in the past year, according to new figures, as employers cut entry-level roles in favour of AI and battle rising costs’ – BBC https://t.co/dKT0XhBtyn

— Mark Williamson (@markrwilliamson) August 24, 2026

Data

The data in question comes from the job site Adzuna. As reported by the BBC:

Jobs website Adzuna said it had just 8,383 graduate vacancies listed in July, down from 15,397 at the same point last year.

Adzuna also found competition among job seekers across all levels is rising, with an average of 2.14 job seekers per vacancy in July, up from 1.93 a year earlier.

Adzuna is a search site for jobs. The service allows you to search every job site at once, with roles showing up in one easy-to-scroll list:

Adzuna is an aggregator, meaning most jobs aren’t directly uploaded to the site. As such, there could be other reasons why graduate jobs from sites like Indeed or TotalJobs aren’t pulling through. We’ve seen no suggestion this is happening here; at the same time we can’t confirm it isn’t. We also can’t confirm employers haven’t simply shifted their recruitment efforts to means other than job sites.

We aren’t the only ones to be suspicious anyway:

This is considered the most reliable data source for the top 100 graduate recruiters, and shows vacancies down 5.1% year-on-year for the 3rd year running. Interestingly though, grads from a small group of Russell Group plus are still highly targeted. https://t.co/howjH1l6nk

— Natasha Porter OBE (@NPorter_) August 24, 2026

The 5.1% figure mentioned above was for 2025, with High Fliers writing:

Two-fifths of the country’s top employers recruited fewer graduates in 2025 and recruitment fell in ten out of fifteen key industries & business sectors. Employers’ latest recruitment targets show that there are likely to be even fewer graduate jobs available in 2026 – a further decrease of 0.5% compared with last year. Graduate recruitment at the UK’s leading employers has now slumped by 24.5% since 2022 – a larger reduction than was recorded during the pandemic in 2020 or in the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008-2009, when graduate vacancies fell by 12.3% and 23.3% respectively.

A drop of 50% would suggest we’re in a period of employment uncertainty which is twice as bad as the Great Recession.

The final thing we’ll note here is that the Office for National Statistics has used Adzuna as a data source as recently as 2024. In other words, the site has served as a trusted source of data in the past.

Freefall

People are justifiably worried about generative AI taking their jobs. After all, the AI companies themselves have warned us that’s what’s going to happen. As we’ve reported in the past, however, many companies have ended up rowing back on their AI initiatives. In part this was because many of them failed to realise any observable return on investment. This problem became more obvious this year when OpenAI and Anthropic jacked up their prices:

Microsoft Bans Claude Code After AI Costs More Than The Humans It Replaced

— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) June 1, 2026

In other words, even if UK companies are hiring fewer graduates because of AI right now, that’s not necessarily a sustainable situation.

The other side to this story which is gaining attention is the following, as reported by the BBC:

Businesses have said employer national insurance and minimum wage hikes have made hiring more expensive, particularly for junior staff.

This is leading to coverage like the following:

Worst Graduate Jobs Market on Record: "This Is Exactly What Labour Were Warned About"

Vacancies for university leavers collapse by 45 per cent to the lowest level ever recorded…https://t.co/yCnO9i9BC1

— Conservative Post (@ConsPost) August 24, 2026

Employers and right-wingers will seize on any opportunity to claim that paying people a fairer wage is a travesty. This isn’t to say well-meaning moves can’t have negative consequences, but it is certainly reason to be suspicious of how this data is being reported.

Big problems with AI

Regardless of whether it’s a 50% drop or less than that, and whether it’s due to AI, there are clearly problems in the job market. As ever, the right will tell you that the only solution is to abolish tax for the rich and to mandate in-work poverty for the rest of us. The battle is convincing the broader public it’s in their best interests for things to improve for them – not for our increasingly bloated 1%.

Featured image via Gatot Adriansyah (Canva Image Library)

By Willem Moore

The US Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times in which he threatened an “economic D-Day” for Iran, but Yanis Varoufakis has interpreted the bizarre rhetoric as a sign that Washington is not just panicking but has slipped into outright despair.

Bessent: panicking

This all happened while Bessent’s efforts to calm the sell-off in US treasuries failed.

President Trump has dismantled Iran’s military capabilities, destroyed nearly 100 percent of its military factories, and buried its nuclear program.

We are now entering the endgame. At dawn begins an economic D-Day — the single greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against…

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) August 23, 2026

Bessent used Pascal’s Wager to warn Iran’s trading partners that sticking with Tehran is a bad bet. If the US follows through, they will be isolated. “Any nation that serves as a financial artery of a withering regime should expect to share in its isolation,” he said.

Goodness gracious! For Scot Bessent to enlist Pascal’s Wager in the Financial Times against Iran, Washington must be in the psychological state that lies just beyond panic: despair. https://t.co/yM3pFtytRc

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) August 23, 2026

Efforts to calm bond markets slammed

Bessent said Iran’s “enablers” were purchasing and transporting its oil, moving its finances through exchange houses and free trade zones, welcoming its flights, and turning a blind eye to seaborne fuel transfers and the illicit use of their banks, all while “concealing” the extent of their “complicity.”

The same FT just on Saturday 22 August had slammed Bessent’s efforts to calm the US bond markets, saying:

Bessent’s running battle with the bond market is starting to look like his boss’s war in Iran — started by his own hand with a tangled set of objectives, an underestimated opponent and an implausible path to victory.

Financial Times:

“Scott Bessent’s running battle with the bond market is starting to look like his boss’s war in Iran — started by his own hand with a tangled set of objectives, an underestimated opponent and an implausible path to victory. And like the conflict in the Middle… pic.twitter.com/gTmzj3OGOU

— JaguarAnalytics (@JaguarAnalytics) August 22, 2026

Last week, Bessent tried to calm the US bond markets by announcing the Treasury would double its buybacks of long-dated debt. But the intervention offered only “temporary relief.”

Blatant act of lawlessness

Iran’s foreign minister, Araghchi, said the new sanctions package is like watching “some movie playing over and over again,” Al Jazeera reported.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the new US sanctions package, likely to be unveiled Monday, is like watching the ‘same movie playing over and over again’.

He added that the ‘bullying’ under Trump is no different from that under previous US administrations. pic.twitter.com/gXjNoGqZIE

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 24, 2026

Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi told CNN that this new pressure campaign on Iran will likely result in “counterescalation” by Iran – not surrender. He said that Trump’s maximum pressure was supposed to break Iran eight years ago, and the blockade was supposed to do the same four months ago.

Told @cnn that we have been here before: Trump’s maximum pressure was supposed to break Iran 8 years ago. The blockade was supposed to break Iran four months ago.

Trump’s D-day pressure will squeeze Iran, but Tehran’s most likely response is counterescalation – not surrender pic.twitter.com/IfTbes9Tcj

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) August 24, 2026

The New York Times, in an article, quoted Wu Xinbo, a leading American studies scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai who advises China’s foreign ministry, as saying about the “economic D-Day” threats:

This threat reveals how desperate the Trump administration has become on the issue of Iran.They issue this threat, not because they think it is workable, but because they have no other options.

NYT also noted that China is Iran’s largest trading partner and has for decades defied Western sanctions by buying up to 90% of Iran’s oil exports.

China has also supplied Iran with technology and raw materials for its missile and drone programs. The paper said China feels confident it can resist the pressure, in part because it can squeeze US “critical mineral supplies” and has “stockpiled months worth of oil” to withstand the loss of Iranian crude.

Iran still controlling Hormuz

Bloomberg’s Abeer Abu Omar reported that the IRGC has “scenarios laid out” for any US economic isolation plan.

She said while Iran’s oil exports are “virtually at zero” due to the US naval blockade,  it will take about six months for Iran to feel real pressure.

She added that Iran still “asserts dominance over the Strait of Hormuz,” where vessel traffic is “very close to zero.”

She also noted that “the Houthis are forcing Saudi Arabia to take the French routes through Africa” to avoid danger in the Red Sea.

By Nandita Lal

New research has exposed widespread apparent violations in published secondary-school menus. This comes as parents say stronger standards need backing with proper monitoring and enforcement.

Three in four publicly accessible secondary-school menus which campaign group Bite Back analysed didn’t comply with current 2014 School Food Standards. Meanwhile, new polling has found that 72% of parents support government measures to implement checks that ensure compliance with the incoming updated standards.

The findings come in a new study from Bite Back. It’s a youth-led movement campaigning to change the way unhealthy foods are made, marketed and sold, especially to children.

The charity examined a representative sample of 500 state-funded secondary schools across England and found downloadable menus for almost 400. Of the nearly 400 menus analysed, over three quarters (76%) contained an identifiable violation of the current standards.

The government is planning to roll out improved School Food Standards in the coming months to accompany the expansion of Free School Meals to all children on Universal Credit. But parents are calling for stronger accountability.

Public First carried out separate polling of over a thousand parents across England, on behalf of the School Food Review. It found strong support for greater enforcement of these new standards.

72% supported government measures to check whether food served in their child’s school meets the updated standards. Parents were more confident the reforms would actually improve their children’s school food if they had external monitoring and enforcement.

D’Arcy Williams, chief executive of Bite Back, said:

At a time when the health of 1 in 3 English children is at risk, parents are sending the government a clear message: stronger school food standards must come with teeth.

Schools need the support to deliver, but the companies making money from feeding children must also be held accountable.

Ministers now have an opportunity to ensure the new rules are transparent, independently monitored and properly enforced, so every child gets the food they need to learn and thrive.

Williams added:

These findings are very alarming and expose a system that is fundamentally failing our children. It is shocking to find crisps and chocolate being pushed at breakfast time or processed meats like sausage rolls and bacon baps being served far more frequently than the rules allow.

Young people have been telling us for years that their school food is ‘beige, bland and boring’ and now we have more evidence that they are being surrounded by unhealthy food throughout the school day.

Schools should be a sanctuary for health and learning, yet the current postcode lottery of food quality is undermining that mission.

Menus repeatedly breach guidelines

The menu analysis found repeated violation examples of unhealthy options offered during breakfast and break times. These included crisps and branded confectionery.

Many menus also advertised processed meat such as sausage rolls and bacon baps, or starchy foods cooked in oil such as hash browns and chips. All more frequently than the current standards permit.

These findings also align with additional insights from the same polling where 1 in 5 children are getting junk snacks like biscuits, crisps, chocolate and sweets almost every day.

Of the menus with no violation, almost none included their break menu options. And these usually account for most other menu violations. This suggests that the true scale of the problem may be greater than the publicly available documents reveal.

The research follows an investigation by the BMJ into the commercial environment surrounding school food.

At the UK’s biggest school food industry event, the BMJ found that 52 of 137 exhibiting companies, more than a third, supplied products high in fat, salt or sugar. These included hot dogs, pizzas, muffins and soft drinks.

The main trade association for school caterers reportedly organised the event. It takes sponsorship from companies supplying products including pizzas, cakes, waffles and ice cream.

Carrera (19), a Bite Back campaigner, said:

Young students have been saying for years that what appears on school menus often doesn’t give us the fuel we need to concentrate, learn and get through the school day.

If you’re not in a canteen every day, you might not realise that. We are surrounded by unhealthy products every day, even in the spaces that are supposed to be helping us grow and thrive.

The new standards are a real opportunity-but the government needs to make sure they are actually followed.

Stephanie Slater, the founder and chief executive of the charity School Food Matters, said:

With these incoming improved standards, we have a once in a generation opportunity to raise the quality of school food for every child.

But the data and the public demand is clear: standards without a robust compliance framework will miss this opportunity.

Parents want to know their children are actually receiving the nutritious meals they need to thrive at school. And that can only happen through a combination of collaborative efforts from school leaders, Food Standards Agency, and Ofsted.

Support for universal Free School Meals

Parents also expressed overwhelming support for the government to go further on expanding access to Free School Meals. 80% supported extending provision to every primary-school child. And a similar number (78%) supported extending it to all children across primary and secondary schools.

The research also found:

• There were 224 schools (57%) providing meat products such as burgers, nuggets, sausages and goujons more often than the twice a week permitted by the standards.
• Hash browns, which as a fried starchy food should be a menu option only twice a week, were being offered more often than that at 144 schools (37%).
• There were 123 schools (31%) using chocolate in solid form, such as chocolate chips or chocolate coating, as an ingredient in dessert or bakes, despite it being banned.

Bite Back said the findings show the government has an opportunity and a clear public mandate to ensure more children receive nutritious and delicious school food. And it can also make sure the companies providing it actually meet the School Food Standards everywhere, for every child.

The government’s proposed School Food Standards would increase the availability of nutritious options such as fruit, vegetables, wholegrains and pulses. And they would further restrict high-sugar foods, drinks and other unhealthy options.

Bite Back is calling for the final standards to cover the whole school day and require complete and accessible menus to be published online. And it wants a properly resourced compliance system of independent monitoring and enforcement to support the standards.

Featured image (illustrative) via the Canary

By The Canary

Several major trade unions have reportedly pledged that they’ll resist the EHRC’s transphobic code of practice, which came into force on 5 August. While the new guidance is desperately unclear, many organisations have quickly adopted trans-hostile policies, even where there is no legal requirement to do so.

The news, first published in the Times, follows the announcement that four of the eleven Labour-affiliated unions will boycott the upcoming Labour Women’s Conference in September 2026. Unison, Aslef, Usdaw, and the Musicians’ Union cited the party’s decision to ban trans women from attending the event.

The EHRC code encourages service providers to require that anybody they perceive as trans should use ‘single-sex’ spaces aligned with their sex assigned at birth, or a mixed-sex space. Not all workplaces count as service providers, but this hasn’t prevented some from abandoning trans-inclusive policies regardless.

Unison: ‘We are taking the fight to every workplace’

As such, Unison general secretary Andrea Egan said in a video posted to Twitter/X that, on the EHRC code:

Over 600 members have written to us and provided examples of how the updated EHRC guidance is unworkable. We’ve also heard many employers have withdrawn their trans equality policies in response to this guidance and that is unacceptable.

I’ll be working with our network and equality team to ensure that we are taking the fight to every workplace to make them trans inclusive.

Unison represents some 1.3 million members. It also happens to be Labour’s second-largest union donor, to the tune of almost £26m to the party since 2010.

A spokesperson for Unison also stated that:

The union has an agreed policy recognising that trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid.

As a responsible organisation, Unison is complying with the judgment of the Supreme Court and the recent ruling of the certification officer.

The impact on trans, non-binary and gender diverse members is devastating. The union will be campaigning for a change in the law to reflect its policy.

NUS: EHRC code is ‘ideologically motivated’

In a similar move, the National Union of Students (NUS) has criticised the apparent bias behind the EHRC code. Avery Greatorex, NUS vice-president for liberation and equality, said:

We are wholeheartedly against this new guidance, and believe that it is not the result of unbiased legal advice, as it should be, but is ideologically motivated by the so-called ‘gender-critical movement’.

We thus encourage activists to resist trans-exclusionary policies.

Critics, including genocide watchdog the Lemkin Institute and even EHRC insiders, have made similar claims regarding the commission’s anti-trans ideology. Likewise, the guidance is already facing a legal challenge from two anonymous claimants, alleging that it fundamentally misunderstands the law.

As such, the NUS has issued a booklet containing advice for members on how to remain trans-inclusive in the wake of the guidance. It includes a letter template for students to send to their vice chancellors, which urges them:

to co-design all policies regarding the new Code of Practice with trans staff and students. Together, I am sure you can create policies that both follow the law and mitigate its trans-exclusionary consequences. I look forward to hearing how you plan to do this.

BMA: Code ‘will not work’ with NHS reality

Meanwhile, the British Medical Association (BMA) council has hit out at the sheer impracticality of implementing the EHRC’s guidance. Whilst that would be valid in itself, it’s particularly true given that the NHS is already dangerously overstretched. Deputy chairman Emma Runswick told the Times that:

Doctors want to be able to provide care to patients of all gender identities … Our concern is that the new code will not work with the reality of NHS services, many of which are already ill-equipped to provide safe and dignified care for trans patients.

Earlier this year, the BMA also criticised the government’s actions towards trans patients with regard to the Cass Review. The BMA’s own review of that report found that it established no evidential basis for the ensuing puberty blocker ban. As such, the government over-reached in reaction to the (already distinctly transphobic) report.

Other unions which have already criticised the EHRC code include the University and College Union, Unite, GMB, Equity and the Public and Commercial Services union.

The ideologically-captured government and its anti-equality equalities watchdog clearly believe that they have free reign to ride roughshod over trans people and their allies. Fortunately, the UK’s trade movement is here to show them that they’re willing to fight for principles of inclusion and fairness for all.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

Arsenal began their Premier League title defence with the kind of clarity and control that has become their trademark under Mikel Arteta, easing past newly‑promoted Coventry City 3-0 at the Emirates. Goals from Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka and Martin Ødegaard delivered a comfortable victory. The performance itself was sharp, connected, and relentlessly dominant. That was the real statement for the rest of the league challengers.

Coventry’s return to the top flight after 25 years brought noise, anticipation and a sense of occasion, but the gulf in speed, precision and familiarity with Premier League tempo was obvious from the opening minutes. Arsenal, fresh from dismantling Man City in the Community Shield, simply picked up where they left off.

Tzolis sets the early tone for Arsenal

Christos Tzolis, electric in Cardiff last weekend, was again central to everything arsenal produced. the Greece international’s energy, aggression and directness shaped the opening exchanges. With three early efforts, two over the bar and one deflected. Saka, drifting inside from the right, also forced a corner after Tzolis popped up on the opposite flank.

Declan Rice, operating with authority in midfield, sent a 25‑yard effort over as Arsenal tightened their grip. Coventry couldn’t get near them. Opta later confirmed the visitors failed to make a single tackle or register a touch in the Arsenal box during the entire first half. The first time any Premier League side has done so since records began in 2007.

The breakthrough arrived on 15 minutes and again Tzolis was at the heart of it. Again pressing high, he robbed Milan van Ewijk deep in Coventry territory. Riccardo Calafiori, stepping forward from left‑back, delivered a low cross into the area. Havertz, sharp and composed, swept in a clean finish to give Arsenal the lead.

It was a goal built on structure and aggression: the press, the regain, the immediate verticality. Arsenal looked fully in rhythm, and Coventry looked overwhelmed.

Saka doubles the advantage

The second goal came eight minutes later. Rice and Ødegaard combined neatly in midfield before Tzolis, now back on the left, whipped in a cross. Coventry goalkeeper Carl Rushworth attempted to intervene but only succeeded in diverting the ball straight into Saka’s path. The winger, perfectly positioned, tucked home from close range.

It was another example of arsenal’s wide combinations functioning smoothly. Ben White, Saka and Ødegaard knitted patterns down the right; Tzolis and Calafiori stretched Coventry down the left. The champions were in complete control.

Coventry’s first half was summed up by their inability to disrupt arsenal’s rhythm. Loum Tchaouna’s overhead kick onto the roof of the net was their only moment of note before the interval. otherwise, they were pinned back, chasing shadows, and struggling to adjust to the intensity of premier league football.

Frank Lampard, overseeing his first top‑flight game as Coventry manager, watched his side scramble repeatedly as Arsenal worked the ball into dangerous areas. White saw a shot blocked, Rice curled one just wide from a short corner, and the champions moved the ball with a calmness that suggested they were already weeks into the season.

Four minutes into the second half, arsenal sealed the result. White, Saka and Ødegaard combined down the right channel, slicing through Coventry’s defensive shape. Ødegaard’s finish was miscued, but the strike deceived Rushworth and bounced into the net for 3-0.

It was a fitting moment for the captain, who had dictated the tempo throughout. Even when Arsenal eased off slightly, the patterns remained crisp and the control absolute.

Arsenal’s midfield machine

Declan Rice and Myles Lewis‑Skelly operated with authority, recycling possession and stepping forward when space opened. Lewis‑Skelly forced Rushworth into a fine save with a curling effort on 53 minutes, while Tzolis continued to threaten, stinging the goalkeeper’s palms with a drive from the edge of the box midway through the half.

Havertz almost added a fourth late on, denied only by Rushworth’s full‑stretch save after neat footwork inside the box.

Overall this was a controlled, confident opening‑night performance from the champions. The patterns were familiar, the tempo was high, and the new pieces, particularly Tzolis have slotted in seamlessly. Coventry struggled, but Arsenal’s authority was unmistakable.

The champions are up to speed. and on this evidence, they will take some stopping.

Featured Image courtesy of The Guardian 

By Faz Ali

Reform UK has found itself in a strange position this year. On the one hand, it’s very keen to criticise the actions of the past Tory government. On the other, it’s welcomed Tory politicians who caused the issues they’re now complaining about. This situation is compounded by the fact that ex-Tories like Suella Braverman keep wading into the debate themselves:

Not sure "Why didn't you undo the stupid decision I took" is exactly the gotcha Suella thinks it is… https://t.co/BcaYaLl86k

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) August 23, 2026

Pure prejudice

Firstly, we should explain how this all started for Suella Braverman – namely with the following video:

Just another day in @JamesCleverly’s constituency.

Unless we get a Reform government, every town in Britain will look like this. pic.twitter.com/y38AnAlKQt

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) August 23, 2026

As Reform UK Exposed highlighted:

Nigel Farage has posted this video with no credit. Want to know why? Because it was filmed by ‘Free Speech Shell’, a hard-right ‘auditor’ and Tommy Robinson collaborator.

[Nigel Farage]  and [Reform UK] are in bed with the hard-right again, because everything else they’ve got has failed.

Tory James Cleverly also responded, noting:

By Willem Moore

Germany’s ‘Alternative für Deutschland‘ (AfD) is classified as an extremist right-wing organisation even by German security services. And the party is determined to be its true racist, eugenicist self. AfD has announced that if it takes power in the approaching Saxony-Anhalt regional elections, it will segregate refugee children into a separate education system. So far, so unsurprisingly evil. But the party also wants to take Germany back to its nazi roots by segregating disabled children as well.

And for good measure, AfD plans to reduce education on the nazi era and politics.

AfD: “the inclusion experiment has failed”

The racist party’s manifesto announced that it finished with integrated education: the “inclusion experiment has failed and and must be ended”. AfD claims that it wants to pull disabled children out of mainstream education for their benefit. It says that it will segregate refugee children to send a “message that their stay in Germany is only temporary” – while it works to shut down the arrival of refugees Germany’s own policies help to create. And even in the refugee schools, Islamic education will be excluded because “Islam is not part of Germany” – making clear just who the AfD’s scapegoat is.

But let’s be clear: this is all about preventing impressionable young people being exposed to, and learning to empathise with, children who are different from them. Nazi ‘othering’ – and the murderous ‘useless eater’ mentality that goes with it – depend on indoctrinating the young to hate those who are not like them.

Keeping German children from being able to empathise and identify with fellow human beings the state – or a political party wanting to control the state – rejects and scapegoats. In the country that gave birth to Nazism and the slaughter of Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ people and people of ‘impure’ or ‘subhuman’ ethnicity, what could possibly go wrong?

Saxony’s education minister Conrad Clemens told Bild that:

The idea of putting foreigners and students with disabilities in separate classes leads to a dangerous division in the classroom. Such ideas are unacceptable for our education system.

Polling projects a strong performance for AfD in the 6 September 2026 Saxony-Anhalt elections.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Jewish anti-genocide activist Tony Greenstein was dramatically acquitted on Friday as the UK state attempted to brand him a terrorist. Greenstein triumphed after giving his own “historic” closing speech. He triumphed despite the attempts of the prosecutor and judge to limit his defence and keep the jury in ignorance of the full facts.

“Bile and venom” from the judge, says Greenstein

And now, he has moved from being the defendant to going on the offensive – and his first target is trial judge Sarah Plaschkes. Typical of Greenstein, he does not pull any punches. In a new article, he accuses the judge of:

Spew[ing Bile & Venom as Her Determination to Have Me Convicted was Thwarted.

Ever willing to tweak the Israel lobby’s nose, Greenstein adds that “the Zionists are furious” at the mere two hours it took the jury to return a unanimous not-guilty verdict.

And while human rights group CAGE described Greenstein’s win “affirms supporting Palestine liberation is not a crime”, Greenstein says he began the week not knowing whether he’d return a free man or be locked up for up to fourteen years. And with the altriusm typical of the humanitarian movement that opposes Israel’s genocide, he was thinking ahead to ensure the vulnerable were not left unsupported:

When I set out from Brighton for Kingston-upon-Thames last Monday, I was not sure that I would be coming back anytime soon. I made sure to turn off my electrical appliances.

In the weeks leading up to the trial I had made elaborate arrangements for others to continue the appeal for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin. It would have been devastating if the children of Al Tafawk were to suffer because of my ‘crimes’.

A trusted friend was given full access to my email account and she also had a key to my flat and hence access to my computer. I also ensured that before I went into the dock for what could be my last appearance that I handed my phone to another friend. I also said goodbye to two of my children, James and Ellie, who were in the public gallery.

But then he returns to the judge, whom he  – and a few paragraphs haven’t softened him. This time, he takes aim at her bad grace – even when she knew the jury had sided with Greenstein, she couldn’t resist trying to dismiss his closing speech:

Plaschkes was one of the most unpleasant and dishonest people I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.

When the jury returned she made an extraordinary statement, fully knowing the jury’s verdict. She said that she had considered citing me for contempt of court but had decided against it as my speech was the ‘ramblings of an old man.’ She was sure that the jury’s decision had not been affected by my speech!

For a moment I thought that maybe they had found me guilty after all but when a jury returns after just 2 hours 11 minutes, it is very likely that they have all agreed on a not guilty verdict. When asked their verdict the foreman of the jury pronounced ‘not guilty.’ It was, as you can imagine, an immense relief. Plaschkes exited the court full of fury signifying nothing apart from her own humourless and vapid character. It was like a bad smell disappearing.

Systemic bias

Then Greenstein turns his fire on bias – not just in the judge, but the whole system arrayed against him and the anti-genocide movement:

Plaschke’s Bias

Her bias was truly appalling. Back in January at what was supposed to be the hearing, Plaschkes had turned down our application for the prosecution to be declared an abuse of process.

Section 117 (2A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 states that for an offence relating to a country outside the UK, a prosecution may only proceed with the consent of the Attorney General. However Attorney General, Richard Hermer excused himself, on the grounds of a conflict of interest.

Sarah Sackman – the Solicitor General Who Authorised My Prosecution – Dedicated Zionist – But No Bias According to the Reactionary LJ Edis of the Court of Appeal – Sackperson proves that Labour Zionism is no different from its Likud variant

Day Three of Tony Greenstein’s trial

It therefore fell to the Solicitor-General, Sarah Sackman, to consent. The only problem was that she had been Vice-Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement from 2015 to 2024. She had also attacked me personally in an article in the Jewish News, March 16, 2016. She had co-authored an article with Mike Katz, attacking me as a ‘problematic figure’ i.e. I was anti-Semitic.

It was obvious that Sackman was biased and could not approve my prosecution. Plaschkes disagreed. The Court of Appeal judges, headed by LJ Edis found (para. 57) that ‘A fair minded and informed observer… would not, in our judgment conclude that there was a real possibility that she was biased in taking the only reasonable option open to her.’ One wonders what world Edis and company live in.

And he found that this bias spilled very directly into the trial proceedings:

But no, Plaschkes found procedural reasons for excluding nearly all of my previous articles from the Bundle handed to the jury.

Again the Court of Appeal agreed with her decision. I openly accused her from the dock of trying to rig the trial and contrary to her instructions I referred to the articles throughout my testimony until it became clear to the Jury that Plaschkes and the Prosecution were trying to obtain a wrongful conviction by foul means.

Sir Stephen Sedley – Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge and anti-Zionist

Dishonesty is hard wired into how most judges behave. Like a fish the judiciary rots from the head down. Unlike in previous decades we have no judicial giants like Tom Bingham, Patrick Devlin, Johan Steyn, Lord Philips, Sir Stephen Sedley and Lord Peter Taylor who presided over Hillsborough disaster inquiry. The latter four being Jewish.

In a naturally lengthy article, Greenstein dissects not just the trial and case, but their wider significance in a society facing a state onslaught on human and civil rights. And he gives lengthy, practical advice for those who offend it and find themselves in its legal crosshairs for opposing genocide and crimes against humanity – though some of it is potentially at odds with typical legal advice. Here is the first part:

i. Consider carefully your solicitor’s advice, if you are arrested, to do a No Comment interview. The reason why is that the interview is read into the record of the court and this is an unparalleled opportunity to put your case direct to the jury. Of course in my case it was edited down from about 35 to a dozen pages. The Prosecution did their best to reduce what I had to say but even they could not manage to exclude what I had to say. Plaschkes of course went along with all the edits bar one – then the Prosecution suggested replacing one question but leaving the answer intact thus providing an answer to a question that was excluded!!

If you are confident enough in what you have to say and articulate enough really think through whether or not it will help you. Remaining silent will enable the Prosecution to draw ‘adverse inferences’ from your silence. Your answers to the Police interrogator will be read in court, often edited but it will enable you to get your case across if there is a prosecution.

ii. Prepare for your cross-examination carefully. This is your opportunity to get your case across. Don’t accept the framework of the Prosecution. When they ask ‘did you do A on the Nth day of whenever’ make sure you paint a wider picture and put it into context. If they ask you do you support Hamas don’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Start off by explaining that Hamas was the elected government of the Palestinians. That they are a resistance group that Israel and the West has demonised. Always set the scene.

iii. If the judge tells you not to be political don’t just accept the reprimand. When I was told this, repeatedly, I responded that genocide is political. The proscription itself is political. The definition of terrorism is so wide that the government has massive discretion as to who is proscribed as a terrorist organisation and who is not.

iv. Prosecuting people for what they say rather than what they have done is inherently political. I accused Plaschkes from the dock of trying to rig the trial.

v. Put the Prosecution and Judge on trial. Accuse them of turning a blind eye to Apartheid and Genocide and turn the spotlight on Israel.

vi. If – and I say if, you feel confident enough, then take the final closing speech to the jury. There will be pressure on you not to but remember your barrister will not be able to mention the Bushell’s case nor that of judges who have backed the idea that some laws need to be set aside when they provide for an unjust outcome. You are not there to satisfy your legal team. They are there to help you. Take charge of the case and challenge your barrister/solicitor.

vii. When Plaschkes warned me that she would intervene in my speech I retorted that Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice dictates that judges should not interrupt a litigant in person’s closing speech unless absolutely necessary, favoring corrections during the summing-up instead.

Archbold is the practitioner’s bible. It is highly authoritative: Even though it is not legally binding, Archbold is treated with immense respect. It has been in continuous publication since 1822. Judges and barristers rely on it daily in the Crown Court to quickly look up criminal procedures, sentencing guidelines and case law

After analysing the principles and dangers involved, Greenstein also explains why he chose to give the closing speech himself: he has faced trial before and knows that barristers might give judges too much respect when they try to shut down a line of argument. And he combines this with derision for both the ‘mainstream’ media and the Israel lobby that has gone into meltdown since his win:

When I observed left-wing barristers buckling under the dictat of Judge Michael Chambers KC in Wolverhampton, I made a decision when I was arrested that I would take the closing speech.

Media coverage has been variable. It has been greeted with delight by the activist media but largely ignored by the bourgeois press and the ruling class stenographers.

Brighton and Hove News which is a far-right-wing rag that supports the Zionists carried news of my being admonished by the judge two days ago when I was told that the court was not a political forum but for some reason it has failed to report my acquittal! Clearly the verdict of the jury must have upset their nasty little liar of an editor Jo Wadsworth.

The Jewish Chronicle chose to focus, not on my acquittal but on the Judge’s attack on me! The BBC’s article was fair enough without carrying anything about my anti-genocide stance.

But perhaps the sweetest of all the reactions was the fury of Heidi Bachram, the non-Jewish Zionist snout. She is someone who follows in the footsteps of the informers who betrayed Jews hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The full article includes much more detail of Greenstein’s experience, his trial thinking and the landscape in which the whole farce-turned-victory unfolded. Read his account of the historic case in full here.

By Skwawkbox

The reputation of AI companies is currently in the toilet, and with good reason. These tech tycoons told us their product would eliminate all our jobs, and that it might even wipe us out as a species. What did we get in return? A product which failed to live up to the grandiose claims, and AI data centres which have put all sorts of strains on local communities. Now, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is admitting he was wrong to threaten us all with the end of the world:

Oh golly jee and what absolute turd burglar of a person started that trend. Oh it was you Sam! It was you….

""I think AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world." -Sam Altman 2015 https://t.co/ZFTuY08bUu

— ArRENCEAI (@ArRENCEAI) August 23, 2026

If you’ve not followed the generative AI boom, you’re probably wondering how they got so off track with their messaging. It seems obvious to most that threatening Armageddon would not make for a long-term sales strategy. To explain why it worked for a while, we need to explain the underlying economics.

OpenAI: messaging

The big problem for these companies isn’t whether their products are useful; it’s whether they can make money. Generative AI is incredibly expensive to run, which is why they subsidised the cost with cheap subscriptions. Earlier this year, AI companies upped the costs to more closely match the reality. This led to business horror stories like the following:

Uber handed its 5,000 engineers an AI coding assistant in December. By April, the company had blown through its entire AI budget for all of 2026, with two thirds of the year still to go.

Cheap, basic AI has gotten almost free over the past few years. But almost no company builds… https://t.co/rTlWgZECa7

— Anish Moonka (@anishmoonka) May 24, 2026

Microsoft Bans Claude Code After AI Costs More Than The Humans It Replaced

— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) June 1, 2026

OpenAI and Anthropic subsidised cheap subscriptions through hundreds of billions in investor money. Eventually, these investors will want to see some sort of return on their investment, but that will require AI companies to make a profit. Currently, this can’t happen without some sort of miraculous new discovery which makes it cheaper to run.

This – in part- is why the world has been “slow” to adopt AI. It’s because when companies and individuals have adopted it, the results have been mixed. And this was true even before the prices became prohibitively expensive.

Doomsaying

Getting back to the ‘end of the world’ messaging, the theory is AI companies played up the potential of AI running amok to attract investors. CEOs like OpenAI’s Altman tried to convince the world that generative AI would one day evolve into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – a machine which could think for itself (unlike generative AI, which generates content based on probabilities – often ‘hallucinating‘ as a result). The threat of AGI was that it might go rogue and kill us all; the promise was that it would replace all human labour, grossly enriching those who invested early.

Altman played up the threat to remind investors of the hope. In doing so, he attracted hundreds of billions in investor money. The problem is that this vast influx of cash hasn’t led to a viable product. And now, Altman is left with terrible reputational damage and a technology that costs too much to run to profit from.

OpenAI boss: “I was wrong”

The following is what OpenAI boss Altman said in a recent interview (emphasis added)

I thought when we got to GPT-4, which was back in 2023, that very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption, software businesses up for grabs right away, than it turned out to be.

I think I was wrong about a few things, but one in terms of the speed: the economy just has so much inertia.

People keep doing the same things, buying from the same company, wanting to use their tools the same way. I think this is actually a positive in many ways, and it’s going to make this big transition go smoother and slower. I’m grateful for it.

But it means we’ve all been too ambitious on timelines. Even with this incredible technology, society and the economy will adapt more slowly.

Altman blames the “inertia” of the economy for the slow uptake of his product. The reality is that the companies which moved quickest on generative AI are among those which suffered the worst consequences:

Klarna was one of the first to go all-in on AI, replacing 700 customer service staff last year.

Now CEO @klarnaseb says they focused too much on cost and hurt quality, so they’re investing in humans again and will let customers talk to real people. https://t.co/zJifpUfSzJ

— Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi) May 11, 2025

It’s definitely true that some businesses have found uses for AI. Even before OpenAI and Anthropic jacked up the prices, though, many companies were struggling to show any return on investment from AI services. And this is unworkable for a product which is supposed to replace all human labour.

PR nightmares

Here’s another example of the sort of wrong-headed messaging that Altman was putting out:

I can’t imagine why public support for data centers plummeted https://t.co/QBRd0i4xJL

— K. (@IbaraEleven) August 22, 2026

Do you want a world in which your children are so mindless that they have to pay Silicon Valley to do their thinking for them? Of course you don’t.

Another problem AI has is that although you can technically use it to replace human labour, the results are often substandard. Graphic design is one area in which you can visually see the downgrade:

Who the fuck saw this and was like “hell yeah, print that shit” https://t.co/LgkrXeNrdF

— SorryHat 𝕬𝖙𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖞 𝖆𝖙 𝕲𝖍𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝕷𝖆𝖜 (@sorry_hat) August 24, 2026

Companies aren’t just using AI to get rid of employees either; they’re also using it to screw over customers:

Why would an airline CEO announce this publicly, given the backlash that will likely result?

It's to signal to the other airlines that this is the plan going forward. It's how corporations collude out in the open while everyone pretends we still have a competitive maket. https://t.co/sTkQGvptSm

— 99% Johnny Graz (@jvgraz) August 24, 2026

The many problems of AI have fed into a backlash against data centres in the US. This is particularly focussed on AI data centres which use considerably more electric and water. They also cause other problems, as Benn Jordan detailed:

The following is an example of how the tech world is reacting to the backlash against data centres:

This is what data center developers are saying all across Michigan. It's condescending and it's going over like a lead balloon. 

Michiganders don't need some California billionaires telling us what to do, and we aren't buying their false promises. pic.twitter.com/m4vcYUyU6p

— William Lawrence (@WeWill2026) August 23, 2026

Blowing bubble

The problem for Altman is that he sold generative AI to investors on the understanding that it would be the most valuable technology to ever exist. Now, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that this likely won’t be the case. And as such, it’s hard to see how companies like OpenAI can maintain their value.

With so much of the US stock market buoyed up by AI, the bubble bursting will be significant:

The AI stock market bubble is close to $80 trillion, approximately 2.5x larger than 2000 dot-com bubble.

To give you an idea of the scale of this bubble; if the stock market were to crash back to long-term averages, it would be equivalent to a $300,000 loss per U.S. household. pic.twitter.com/mywiD6rqld

— Financelot (@FinanceLancelot) August 22, 2026

The lesson from all this is that we can’t structure our economic systems around the promises of liars.

Featured image via Joel Saget

By Willem Moore

Israel’s occupation regime has issued an order to kill Palestinian children if they dare to fly kites in Gaza.

The order comes after a manufactured panic following four kites that broke loose over several days and landed in Israeli neighbourhoods close to Gaza. The occupation military admitted the kites posed no threat at all, but this has not stopped ‘defence’ minister Israel Katz from announcing that anyone flying kites will be targeted for ‘forceful‘ military action. Katz also threatened to escalate Israel’s wider assassination campaign and forced displacements across Gaza if the kites continue to fly:

A balloon is like a kite, and a kite is like a drone, whether it carries explosives or not.

Respite denied by Israel

Kite-flying is one of the few recreations that have been within reach for Palestinian children to provide a few moments respite from the horrors of Israel’s genocide. Now it is likely, like so many other things in Gaza, to get them killed by the coloniser.

Zionists’ targeting of children has been identified by the United Nations and others as a core part of its Gaza genocide.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

If you’ve tuned into any political news in the last few days, you’ll have heard the official Labour buzzword of the week: pivot.

Prime minister Andy Burnham is apparently swivelling the party left so sharply you’d think he’d just spotted a late bus leaving the station and is sprinting to catch it. He’s promising “a state that isn’t afraid to intervene”, “putting British industry first”, and “fairness for working people”.

I’m sure we have heard this somewhere before…

Pundits are already cooing about a return to roots — like Labour’s forgotten roots were just hiding down the back of the leader’s sofa all this time.

But look past the nicely turned phrases and the perfectly pressed shirt, and this isn’t a revolution. It’s just the same old menu, but with a fancier description on the blackboard.

Let’s give credit where it’s due, if we must.

Burnham: grateful for small mercies?

On paper, it all sounds great. Who wouldn’t cheer for backing our steel mills instead of letting bosses ship jobs abroad to save a few quid? Who’d argue with telling big corporations they can’t hoover up record profits while paying staff so little they qualify for food banks?

It’s the sort of stuff that gets shared a thousand times on Facebook by people who haven’t voted since 2005, nodding along like “at last, someone gets it”.

Then you read the small print — or rather, notice the complete absence of small print on the stuff that actually matters — and it’s like biting into an M&S Gourmet Nut Wellington and finding it’s mostly carrot peel and stewed nettles.

Leaked briefings still talk about “streamlining welfare” — which in Westminster language means something like making life even more miserable for people who’ve already got it tough.

There have been no promises to end sanctions that cut off cash for weeks because someone missed a job centre slot while they were in hospital, or their bus was cancelled — which, let’s be honest, happens most weeks anyway.

And Universal Credit’s infamous six-week wait? Still there, lingering like a bad smell in a bathroomless HMO.

Panic setting in already

On the big stuff? Total silence. Burnham’s said zilch about bringing energy companies into public ownership — the only plan that’d actually stop bills going up faster than a queue at Greggs on a Saturday morning. Nada on closing tax loopholes that let giants like Amazon pay less than your average market stallholder. Nothing about scrapping Trident, even though we could fund every school repair in the country three times over for what that ludicrous white elephant costs.

And it turns out that standing up for ordinary people stops dead the moment it might upset a wealthy donor or a newspaper editor.

This isn’t a pivot. Is it? It’s a panic.

And we’ve seen this act before. Labour won power claiming they’d fix the housing crisis, sort out social care, and the usual nonsense about making work pay.

What has changed? Rents are higher than the roof on my nan’s old council high rise, there are no rent controls in sight, and no-fault evictions are still the greedy landlords’ favourite party trick.

Now we hear 30,000 NHS jobs could go — at the exact same time private firms are trousering millions in outsourcing contracts.

Some will say “give Burnham a chance, he’s only just started, bless him”. Fair enough — but you don’t need six months of policy reviews to scrap a rule that hurts children, right?

You don’t need cross-party talks to arrive at the conclusion that energy belongs to all of us, do you?

And do you really need a focus group to tell you to do the obviously right thing?

Burnham: choosing not to choose

These aren’t tricky administrative puzzles — they’re choices. And right now, Burnham’s choosing not to choose.

Out here in Swindon, in towns across the south west and the north, we don’t care about Westminster wordplay. We care about the neighbour working two zero-hours jobs who still can’t afford to put the heating on.

We care that utter monsters such as Nigel Farage can spout any old rubbish and get called “bold”, while anyone asking for actual change gets dismissed as “unrealistic”.

Burnham might think a few rousing lines will win us back. He might reckon we’re too busy counting pennies for the weekly shop to check if he’s actually delivering. But he’s wrong. We’re not daft. We know the difference between someone who’s turning the ship around, and someone who’s just polishing the brass portholes while it slowly drifts onto the rocks.

We don’t want speeches. We want action. We want a party that’s not scared to pick a side — our side, not the boardroom’s — no fine print, and no last-minute U-turns like the ones that haunted the last Prime Minister, whatever his name was.

Actions speak louder than carefully rehearsed buzzwords — and right now, Burnham’s actions are whispering while his speeches are little more than shouting. This isn’t a bold new journey, it’s just more of the same old drift, with a louder PA system.

At the end of the day, most voters aren’t fooled by sound bites, spin, or fancy pivots. We can all spot a con when we see one. If it looks like the same old Tory-lite soup, tastes like the same old Tory-lite soup, and costs the same old price in our pockets — it really doesn’t matter what label you stick on the tin.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachael Swindon

Since 2025, Reform UK has been incredibly successful at winning local elections. What it’s struggled with is holding on to its new councillors. The below clip from ex-Reformer Robbie Lammas gives you an idea of why that is:

'They're not a professional political party… it's mafia-esque.'
@RobbieLammas explains why representing Reform UK as a councillor was 'the biggest mistake of his life'. pic.twitter.com/UYqxI0pI0e

— LBC (@LBC) August 23, 2026

Defector to Reform

Unlike many of his now-ex-colleagues, Lammas didn’t win on a Reform ticket. Instead, he defected from the Conservatives in late 2025. He wasn’t the only one to do so either, with many big names like Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick following the same path. The difference between them and Lammas is he wasn’t willing to put up with the nonsense.

In the above clip, Lammas says:

Reform is a bit like the person who sells you DVDs in a pub in Clacton, okay? They promise you things that you want. They offer you a price… and you’re quite happy to do the deal, but when you get home and it’s rubbish quality, you really resent it…

Lammas also said:

It was the biggest mistake of my life. They’re completely unprofessional in every way, shape, or form. And that is the reason why Kemi is saying what she’s saying.

Lammas is referring to the following comments from Kemi Badenoch:

Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, has described the prospect of a coalition government with Reform UK as “monstrous”.

Again ruling out the prospect of a deal between the two parties, she said any agreement would “put off” as many voters as it would attract … pic.twitter.com/1P1ea4xHFN

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 23, 2026

Both Reform UK and the Conservative Party have defined themselves by how they differ from one another. As such, Badenoch is correct to think a merger could do just as much damage as good. We actually have some proof of this too, because Reform’s polling has worsened since it began accepting ex-Tories. This is worth bearing in mind, because despite what Lammas is publicly saying, one of his underlying concerns could be that unlike when he first defected, Reform is no longer the obvious next party of government.

Not normal

Lammas continued:

They’re not a normal alternative conservative outfit which you can do deals with. They’re not even a professional political party. They are a power unto themselves. They run themselves more like some corrupt, strange, mafia-esque situation. They don’t make up policy properly. There’s no professionalism. So there is no talent to do a deal with.

Lammas isn’t the first ex-Reformer to make such claims. As we reported, several councillors have claimed that Reform HQ stopped them acting in the local interest. As Durham councillor Nick Brown said:

When we took control [of Durham Council], I believed the messages from Nigel Farage that we would make big changes for people living locally.

But really, whenever we had a local issue, we were told to follow the party line. Not to rock the boat, bring press attention on the council. We all turned into Nigel’s yes-men – ordered to be on best behaviour to help him get to power.

In fighting

Lammas finished by talking about infighting:

There’ll be nothing to gain for the Conservative Party in doing any kind of deal with them, and it turns out they absolutely hated Conservatives when you got to the inside. And then I saw the infighting. It made everything that I experienced in the Tory party look like playground politics.

You’ve got the different camps warring with each other constantly. I described it… unlike a family – like the Conservative Party – Reform is like a HMO, where you have strangers living in the same building, despising each other.

As we’ve reported, Reform politicians are currently denying that the national party is a hotbed of infighting.

By my reckoning in the past week senior Reform figures have claimed journalists from the Spectator, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, the Sun, the Times and the I Paper have all independently invented broadly the same stories about internal infighting within the party…

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) August 22, 2026

According to Lammas, this infighting seems to exist at every level of the party. Which probably isn’t good, is it? Not if you have hopes of Reform successfully running the country.

Unstable Reform

Reform UK has what may be an unsolvable problem. The party’s driving engine is the politics of division, and as a result it attracts divisive politicians. This works when they’re in lockstep, but frequently they won’t be, because they’re not the sort of people who think about the greater good; they’re the sort of people who simply want to get their own way.

Featured image via Belinda Jiao / Gareth Fuller

By Willem Moore